


Run Like a River

by runningreader



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Teachers, Bellamy Blake is a History & Mythology Nerd, Bellamy is a football coach, Clarke teaches biology, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, I started this back in 2015 before this show got crazy, Modern Era, Octavia is nice and not a cannibal, Teacher AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:20:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 22
Words: 50,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23213944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/runningreader/pseuds/runningreader
Summary: Bellamy is set up for another great season coaching football at Arkadia High School when one of his best players is sidelined on academic probation. Unfortunately, the teacher responsible for this setback seems to be immune to his typical charms.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin, Emori/John Murphy (The 100), Eric Jackson/Nathan Miller, Octavia Blake/Lincoln
Comments: 55
Kudos: 354





	1. I Burn Like a Red Brand

**Author's Note:**

> I started this piece back in 2015, which was somewhere in the middle of season 2. LOTS OF THINGS HAVE CHANGED SINCE THEN, but I stumbled across this in this era of #socialdistancing, and ti reminded me of how simple things were back then.
> 
> Not sure how far I'll get with this, but I'm hoping to finish at some point!

### I Burn Like a Red Brand

Bellamy didn’t particularly like Murphy, but goddamnit, he needed that kid if they had any chance of beating the Forest Hill Grounders in two weeks. He was definitely the quickest, both physically and mentally among their defense, and without him, the rest of the guys would deteriorate into mindless thugs who didn’t know right from left. Murphy promoted order. He operated as the brains for all of them, and Bellamy was pretty sure he actually used mind control to make sure the play turned out as expected. Sure, Murphy was tiny for a defensive lineman, but he was ruthless. He didn’t just know the rules, he knew how to flirt with them so persuasively that the other team had their pants down before they even realized they had been seduced. The uncomfortable looks on the other teams' faces the moment whenever Murphy whispered something across the line gave Bellamy the feeling that Murphy spent his time researching the other players, learning all of their dirt and secrets, and exposing it during a crucial moment of focus.

It was unfortunate that Murphy didn’t devote quite as much time to his studies. Bellamy was prepared to bark at Murphy to go get dressed already when he walked on the field ten minutes late, wearing a crumpled white tshirt and his typical tailored khakis. But then he saw the white slip in his hand and just restrained a groan.

“Come on, Murph! Academic probation? I don’t have time to deal with this! You need to be on the field now!”

Murphy smirked--Bellamy hated that smirk unless it was directed at an opponent. “She’s new, Coach. She doesn’t know how things are run here. Yet.” The smirk intensified. “She’s young, plus she’s hot. Just smile her way, and I’m sure all of our problems will be put aside.” Bellamy heard a chuckle behind him and sent a glare in that direction, not even caring who he was terrifying. “She’s here until 6 with the Environmental Club on Mondays, so you’ll have plenty of time to catch her after practice.”

Bellamy tried to show no emotion. He did not want to encourage this kind of behavior, but things did not sound too hopeless after all. “Name. Subject. Room Number.”

“Ms. Griffin. Biology. 301.”

“Alright, get in the stands and do your homework or whatever.”

Murphy practically skipped to the stands. Perhaps he could still use his mind-controlling powers from there. When Bellamy looked over half an hour later, he was lounging on the bleachers, holding a copy of _Much Ado About Nothing _and flipping through it absentmindedly. Not quite the science homework he was struggling with, but hey, it was work of some sort, right? Plus, the rest of practice was going fairly well. He just hoped that Murphy would be back on the field the next day.__

____

____

Bellamy knew exactly how he was going to approach this Ms. Griffin. He knew that telling new teachers that Arkadia High School was a school of the football team, for the football team, and by the football team typically just instigated discussions about how students were there to learn, not to get concussions.

Even though the football team really did run the school, truthfully. 

Instead, he would approach Ms. Griffin with a smile. After introducing himself, running his hands through his hair, and finding some way to touch her wrist or shoulder, he would launch into an explanation of multiple intelligences. “You see, Ms. Griffin,” he would say, “Murphy isn’t a bad student, he just demonstrates his learning in other ways.” She would smile to herself and he would continue, “He’s more of a kinetic and social learner. You’ll see how he puts his understanding of physics and biology to manipulate the field for each play. He is wonderful at encouraging others to do the right thing. However, Ms. Griffin, you have put us in a very difficult position with Murphy’s academic probation. He is a key member of our team, and if we don’t win the game next week, we won’t make it to the state tournament. Murphy would let down the team, and since the school rallies around our team as a part of their identity, the school as a whole.” 

Ms. Griffin would smile, nod, and agree that Murphy would be back on the field the next day, and assure Bellamy that she would find a quick solution for his grades. If she was actually hot as Murphy had suggested, Bellamy would say that they should grab coffee sometime the following weekend. Of course, they would never actually get coffee; after the victory the next weekend, he would grab her after the game and ask her out for a drink, which would lead to a quick yet satisfying fuck in the bed of his truck on their way out. He would smile at her at faculty meetings, but it was unlikely they would meet again.

That was the plan. It had worked before, and there was no reason that it wouldn’t work again. 

Bellamy traipsed mud and cleat-eaten turf through the immaculate halls of Arkadia High, the filth trail from his shoes narrowed down into a thin line of dirt as he neared his final destination on the second floor. Students were still filing out of the classroom when Bellamy arrived, so he checked his email absent-mindedly; O emailed some question about Latin and his landlord assured him that the plumber would be coming that day to fix the leaky faucet. God, his legs were so tired from standing on soft grass, and he just wanted to sink down onto the floor to wait as he had when he was a student at Ark. Being back in the building was weird, and he avoided it as often as possible.

“Hey Coach Blake!” Harper--one of his best freshman throwers from last year--exited the classroom.

“Hey Harper! How’s cross country?”

“It’s good, but not quite as much fun as throwing a spear. I miss pretending to be an Amazon warrior!”

Bellamy smiled as the girl continued to walk down the hall and checked inside of the classroom to see if the coast was clear. Sure enough, there was only one person left inside the room, a blonde erasing the whiteboard. Ms. Griffin, he assumed. He waltzed in.

“Hi… Ms. Griffin?”

The blonde turned away from the board, glanced at him, and went back to erasing before he even had the chance to flash his signature smile. Bellamy had to give it to Murphy--she was hot. Couldn’t be older than 25 with calves that revealed their musculature as she reached to clean the top of the board. “So long as you’re not a student, it’s Clarke after 3.”

“Okay, well then, Clarke, I was wondering if I could speak to you about…”

“You want to discuss John’s academic standing, I presume.” She turned away from the board, leaving a lone, blue “e.” Bellamy considered letting her know, but he figured if he was trying to get on her good side, he should ignore the urge for now. She had taken a seat on a tall stool behind the teacher’s desk, putting her both at equal eye level than him, but also making her look more relaxed, and thus, in a position of greater power. Bellamy casually matched it, leaning against the wall near the door. “So that would make you Coach Blake, right? John told me that I would be hearing from you.”

Shit. There goes Murphy, messing up his entire plan. The only way that the plan worked is if Bellamy got to play advocate for the poor, misunderstood student. Instead, Murphy had already painted himself as the self-absorbed asswipe that he was. 

“So long as you’re not a student, it’s Bellamy after 6.” He needed to reconfigure his plan. New teacher--she should be an easy target, right? “But yes, I am here to discuss John’s”--yes he would play to her language-- “standing in your class. It appears that he is having some trouble and that this has led him to be put on academic probation. Now, I’m not sure if you know this but…”

“Yes, I know, the game against the Grounders is next weekend and it’s ‘only the most important game of the season, Ms. Griffin! I gotta let him play or I’ll be sorry.’” She did a scary accurate impersonation of Murphy. “But the problem is, I can’t even tell you what to help John with. He’s doing abysmally in my class because he has failed to turn in a single assignment yet. I gave him extensions for a while, but then he just flat-out refused to write essays on our last test. He said they were ‘dumb.’ John won’t be off of academic probation until he comes to enough tutoring sessions--which are every Tuesday and Thursday--to complete all of his missing assignments, and only if he starts turning in his current assignments in this class. If, and only if, he does those things, could he maybe scrape by with a C. But there’s really no way around it.”

Now Bellamy was incensed, more at Murphy for being an ignorant dick who thought he could get away with whatever since his other teachers were scared of him, but he couldn’t really do all that much about Murphy. He could try to sway this teacher. “Well, listen here, Princess.” Her brow furrowed slightly with his change in tone. “Have you ever considered that your assignments just may be too difficult for the students? You look young--how many years have you been teaching? You might need to adjust your expectations of what these students can accomplish. Or maybe you are just not grading fairly? Remember, you should always ask for more than what you anticipate receiving. Even the underachievers should have the opportunity to pass.” He finished with what he hoped was a charming rather than menacing grin and leaned back a bit further onto the wall.

“Okay, Bellamy,” she said his name pointedly, clearly cognizant of his omission of hers, “Sure, I haven’t been teaching very long. But I have my Masters. I’ve completed all of my student teaching at a high needs high school where they did not have the funding for new books for students nevertheless a football team; a school where the teachers didn’t care and most of the students had never completed a novel. I held those students to the same standards, and they were all able to reach them. I’ve looked at the curricula of the former teacher of this class as well as other teachers at this school, and I can promise you, my class is only as challenging as theirs, and in fact, I offer more ways for my students to display their knowledge than the average teacher at this school.

“I have heard about you, Bellamy, and I know you think you can sway teachers into giving your players exceptions just because you were the football star back when they had you as their student. But that won’t work with me. When my students pass my class, it’s because they understand cell structures and anatomy and all of the other important topics I teach. I have not seen John demonstrate those understandings yet, and until he does, I expect him in my classroom from 3-5:30 every Tuesday and Thursday and studying on his own or with the peer tutor I recommended on other days. Not on your field. No exceptions.”

At this moment, a girl with olive skin cracked open the door and leaned in, “Yo, Clarke, you ready to head out? Myles spent all of robotics club talking about Cheetos and now I’m starved." She suddenly noticed that Clarke was not alone, "Whoops, sorry, am I interrupting?”

“No, it’s fine Raven. I was just explaining my expectations of my students to Mr. Blake here.” Bellamy gave a grunt of acknowledgment.

“Ah, troubles with the Mr. Murphy then. I am so glad I got here the year after he took Physics. He sounds like a little shit.” Bellamy moved to argue, but then realized that he really couldn’t.

“But I’m all ready to head out, just let me grab my bag.” She swung the tote over her shoulder and moved to head out of the door, reaching behind Bellamy’s head to turn out the lights.

“You left an “e” on the board,” he remarked, desperate for the last word.

She glanced at it, and wrinkled her nose, clearly debating whether she should admit that he was right or fight against her insistence on perfection. “It can stay until tomorrow.” She held the door, waiting for him to exit the room. 

He slid out of the classroom leisurely, giving her a two-fingered salute as he turned away. “Until next time, Princess.” He could feel her roll her eyes even as he walked away, and he tried not to despair as he thought about how the game the following weekend would go without his key defensive player.

***


	2. I'll Curse the Sun

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I currently have four chapters of this written, and I'll post as I write more, but I figured we'd start with a two chapter day! Note on how long ago I started this fic: I had to change the tv show referenced from House of Cards...

### I'll Curse the Sun

Murphy didn’t strut on the field the next day, and Atom told him that Bio had been last period and Clarke had practically physically restrained him to keep him back for tutoring.

“Like, Murphy asked if he could run to his locker to grab a snack, and Ms. Griffin reached into her desk and chucked a granola bar without looking away from him for a second,” Atom told him as they walked on the field, “It was actually kind of badass.”

“Alright, that’s enough of your stories Atom. Stop thinking about what Murphy is doing and start thinking about what you should be doing.”

“You got it, Coach,” Atom jogged onto the field to join the rest of the team in warm-up. Bellamy tried to imagine being stared at by that blonde while she threw something at him and figured it was likely he would be unable to catch whatever projectile was thrown his way. Her gaze was likely to force even stubborn Murphy into submission.

The next day, however, Murphy was lurking in the stands when warmup started. Bellamy figured it was best to pretend that he did not see the player, and thus, that he was not promoting this delinquent behavior, yet hoped that the presence of their leader would keep the defensive men in line--the previous day had not been terrible, but it hadn’t been great either. 

As warm-ups came to an end, he heard the team chortling to themselves and pointing up into the stands. Bellamy turned around and saw a girl kicking Murphy in the shins and pushing off him off of his perch on the bleachers. 

“Oh shit, he got Emori as a tutor? He won’t be able to convince her to do his work for him in exchange for certain favors.”

Bellamy always tried to ignore all of the gossip that spread amongst their team, but he could not help but know some things, and one of those was that Murphy had his share of girls, and that he did more with his tongue than talk himself out of difficult situations. 

He had to hand it to Clarke though; she clearly found a hardass tutor to do her bidding. 

Murphy went unseen for the rest of practices that week. According to Atom, who was sure to give Bellamy updates before practice every day, he “was not having fun. At all.” Bellamy only wanted to know how long it would take for all of the work to get done. “I mean, he’s getting some of it done, probably much faster than he would, but he’s got a ton of shit to do.” Bellamy just glared at him. “Maybe he’ll get it done by the end of next week?”

The end of next week wouldn’t be soon enough. Bellamy needed Murphy back on the field now. 

On Friday, he made his weekly trip to the grocery store, and as he headed out the door, rotisserie chicken under his arm like the footballs he was so accustomed to carrying, he saw Clarke and her friend walking out of the sushi place across the street, to-go trays in hand. Their eyes met, and she gave him a four-fingered wave from around her phone. He felt inextricably embarrassed, like she was expressing her victory over him. He grasped his chicken tighter, gave her a quick nod of acknowledgment, and hurried to his car.

He slammed into his apartment and slid the chicken across the counter; Miller caught it just before it slid off the edge.

“Bad day?” Miller barely looked up from the episode of  _ Dark _ playing on their TV. He opened the chicken and picked off a piece of crispy skin and popped it into his mouth. 

“Well, we’re not going to win next weekend thanks to the stubbornness of an idealist teacher, but other than that, I’m doing great.” He put on a pot of water to boil, opened up the pantry, and grabbed an almost full box of pasta. He snatched the chicken away from Miller before he managed to eat the entire thing before he could make dinner, and opened up the bag to start chopping up some vegetables. “Hey, I thought we decided we were going to watch that together.”

“What, are we dating now? You know they did a study recently that some percentage of relationships have been ruined by ‘Netflix cheating.’ Let’s not become one of those.”

“Then pause, damn it.” 

Miller paused the show and turned to face Bellamy. “You know it’s not the end of the world if you lose, right?”

Miller had a point. It wouldn’t be the end of the world if they lost. However, it would make life a lot easier if they did make it to states, and even better, if they won. He would have a much stronger argument for that raise he had been hinting at. It would be nice to feel financially independent for once in his life. Bellamy was lucky that he had Miller, and he was aware of this. Somehow, he had managed to make a friend in high school who had:

  1. Dealt with his moodiness and short temper.
  2. Gone to college.
  3. Actually graduated from said college with an employable degree.
  4. Decided to make a living wage in their hometown.
  5. Allow him and O to move in with him and foot most of the rent.



With this raise, Bellamy could convince Miller that he could pay at least his share of the rent. He knew that Miller didn’t really care (“I mean, what else am I going to do with that money? Plus, you know I’d be antisocial without you. I’d have this apartment, Netflix, and be content.”).

Bellamy finished chopping the veggies and threw them in a pan, shaking them slightly, before dumping the pasta in the now boiling water. “Yeah, I know.” He peered into the fridge and noticed a six-pack. “Want one?” He popped open one bottle on the counter and held another in his hand.

“Yes, how nice of you to offer me one of my own beers.” But he held out his hand, and Bellamy rolled it into his palm. “My week was a drag as well, in case you ever wanted to ask.”

“Your weeks are always a drag.”

“Nah--there was that one week where I got that old lady a great deal on her…”

“Miller. All of your weeks are a drag.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” Once they settled into content silence, Miller pressed play and Bellamy finished making dinner, placing a bowl into Miller’s hands. 

When the episode finished, Miller turned to his roommate, “We going out tonight or nah?”

“Nah, we could head out tomorrow, but you know Octavia is coming next weekend, and she’ll force us to be aggressively social.”

“Oh, that’s right. It’ll be nice to have O back.” They moved to the couch to continue their night with the Underwoods.

Bellamy’s phone lit up half an hour later. Slightly blinded by the light of the screen in their now dark apartment, he opened it to a text from O: “Hiya Bells! How’s my team looking?”

"Not so great tbh. Looking forward to having you back though.”

“Ugh. Get their shit together for me won’t you. It’s not worth coming home if they don’t win. You know that’s the only reason I come home.” 

Bellamy smiled at his phone. Even if they didn’t win next weekend, it would be nice to have his little sister back. She decided to fight against the reputation laid by her quarterback older brother by pretty much banning anything related to football. The only games that she went to were the ones that Bellamy either played in or coached. She started playing club rugby last year when she started at Vanderbilt, though maybe that was only due to the boy who had popped up increasingly on her Instagram feed, the one Bellamy obsessively researched for any sort of incriminating behavior and come up short, only for the relationship to fizzle out before winter break. 

She’d stuck with rugby though and took any opportunity she had to explain all the ways it was superior to football. 

“But don’t worry about it too much Bells. It will all work out. It always will.”

“Thanks O. Be safe this weekend.”

“Hey! I always am!”

***

The next week of practice was draining. Each day was successfully worse than the one before, and Bellamy was fucking hoarse when he woke up. He double fisted his typical enormous mug of dark roast in one hand and balanced a slightly smaller container of tea loaded up with honey as he walked into morning lift. The guys knew the drill and were already loading their racks up with slightly less weight than usual in preparation for the next day’s game.

Most of the guys greeted him as they passed his perch on a box. He returned their greetings by gesturing to his two mugs, the known symbol for Coach-has-no-voice-so-don’t-expect-a-response. 

He spent the rest of the day between practices cooped up in his office, calling in assistant coaches to run over plays and confirm details of the game. He knew what they needed to do, he just wasn’t sure if they could do it. 

Octavia texted him before she headed to her 1:10 class, letting him know that she would be heading out after and asking if he wanted her to pick up Acropolis for dinner. 

“Absolutely. Just don’t forget that Miller hates their chicken.” And then it was back to work, and another grueling practice. 

He walked into their apartment with it already smelling like toasted pitas and his sister’s perfume. He swiped a pita through the tzatziki sauce before collapsing onto his sister on the couch.

“Ugh, get off me you loser!”

“It’s great to have you back,” he mumbled into Octavia’s hair. 

“Wow, you sound terrible. Have you been drinking that licorice tea I got you?”

Bellamy rolled off of her and onto the floor. “So much tea. All the tea.” 

“Okay, well I saw a bag of Ricolas in the bathroom, so after dinner, that is the only thing you are allowed to consume. And we need to get you in bed, stat. I expect to have a fun weekend once this entire football thing is over, and that won’t happen if you’re dead.”

Bellamy dramatically crawled to the kitchen; Octavia rolled her eyes. “Oh come on, you’re fine. MILLER. Get out here! Bellamy’s home. Dinner time!”

When they were finally seated at the counter (Bellamy pretended to need Miller’s assistance to get off of the floor) and digging into the Greek food, Octavia decided to hit the big questions.

“I know you said things weren’t looking good a week or so ago, but was that pre-game-angst-Bellamy or I-have-valid-concerns-Bellamy? Because they’re pretty hard to tell apart via text.”

“Unfortunately,” Bellamy popped an olive into his mouth, “I think it was valid-concerns-Bellamy.”

Octavia glanced to Miller, who just gave the nod that confirmed she should move on to a different topic. “So, are there any future sisters-in-law in your life right now?”

Ugh, as if the first topic wasn’t bad enough. “The only consistent woman in my life is the teacher with a stick up her ass that won’t let my best lineman play the game tomorrow.” He looked up to see Octavia glaring at him. She didn’t like to talk about football unless it was good news. She just couldn’t get her head in the game like that. “The only other women are the floozies I pick up at Dropship every few weekends, and we’ve already decided that we aren’t going to discuss our sex lives in that much detail.” She looked content with that answer and reached for the moussaka. “What about you, Octavia? It’s just the one boy still, right, or are there others that I need to look into?”

“Nah, I dumped Eric a week or so ago.” 

“Yeah?”

Miller decided to join in on the conversation, “Yeah, wait, I thought things were going well with him.”

“Turns out not so much. He had like, no friends besides me and his roommate, which meant he wanted to spend every single minute with me. And he was weirded out by the fact that two of my best friends are guys and yet I don’t date them. It was just a bit too much.” She continued to dig into her food as if she were remarking on the weather.

Bellamy shrugged and went back to his souvlaki. Miller exhaled, “You Blakes…” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No (direct) interactions in this chapter, but I promise, they are coming.


	3. Feel the Fire Drain Out of His Hands

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm a total classics nerd, but I'm a little rusty, so we will see how good I am at keeping up with that side of Bellamy. PS: as of right now, all chapter titles are from Yoke Lore lyrics because that's who I've been listening to lately.

Feel the Fire Drain Out of His Hands

Clarke knew that it was going to be a challenging game, but to her, challenging meant close, and this did not appear to be a close game. The Arkadia Hawks did not appear to be doing anything wrong, but nothing seemed to be going quite right either. Anytime the Grounders made a play, they were able to just crush through the Hawks’ defense. Clarke had picked Bellamy out from the crowd on the field early in the game--even though she only could see the backs of heads, his curly hair was distinctive--and she watched as he flipped more and more frantically through the clipboard in his hands, and then when he just stopped flipping as well.

“Fuck, Raven, this is my fault.” Clarke looked around her quickly to make sure that there were no students around. There were, but they had heard the word “fuck” too many times during this game to realize that this one was suddenly coming from the mouth of a teacher.

“Come on, there’s no way for you to completely. . .” Raven paused as she watched the Grounders’ kicker easily lofted the ball through the field goal. The other side of the stadium erupted, and the Hawks dragged their feet back to the line, “. . . completely blame yourself. I mean, I don’t watch much more football than you do, but there’s no way that one player can have quite this effect on a team.”

Almost as a direct contradiction to Raven’s comment, the next play started as did Murphy’s protests of “LET ME DOWN THERE! LET ME AT ‘EM! UGH. GO LEFT GO LEFT. NO GO RIGHT GO RIGHT. UGH. DON’T YOU ASSHOLES HAVE ANY BRAINS?”

Clarke watched as Bellamy’s head flipped around, most likely to check on the source of the disruption, but his eyes met hers instead. They were dark, and his eyebrow raised very slowly. Clarke returned his gaze with what she hoped was an equally confrontational glare. If they had been friends, she would have taken this quick exchange during such a shitty game to give him a conciliatory look, but Clarke never could back down from a challenge. Time seemed to slow--Clarke would have sworn that the people jumping around her were returning to the ground more slowly than gravity should allow--but before she even knew it, she was back to staring at the back of his head. 

Clarke really could not help but feel that this game was partially her fault, though she was still proud of herself for actually taking control of John in her classroom in the way that she had. It would have been so easy to wait a few months before telling John that he was failing biology, to wait until it was impossible for him to return from it. But there was no way she was going to have a student fail her class because she was not holding him accountable during her first year as a teacher. Plus, she was not thrilled at the prospect of having a student sitting in the back of her class who already knew he was going to be retaking the course for the last few months of school. That would have just been disastrous to the entire class’s productivity.

Yes, intervention now was better, even if the football team had to suffer for it. Plus, it appeared that John was actually learning something about biology now. Clarke had to give some credit to Emori, the girl took perhaps even less bullshit than Clarke did. They were moving through his make up assignments far more quickly than Clarke could have anticipated, but each one was done with typical John Murphy sass, so she knew that he had not bribed her in any way. 

Her conscience wasn’t quite cleared, but at least her head was. Clarke attempted to enjoy the rest of the admittedly terrible game. When it ended in inevitable defeat, she watched as Bellamy pulled the boys together into a tight and quiet huddle before they headed off of the field. When they broke apart, the boys certainly did not look happy, but none of them looked terrified either. Bellamy walked slowly at the side of the pack, head raised high, nodding to the boys who came up to them and exchanging a few words. 

******

“And then I was all like, ‘dux feminam facti bitches’ and just peaced straight out of that misogynistic bullshit.” Octavia was clearly trying to distract Bellamy out of the horrid mood that he had been in since the end of the game. “Give me something here, B. That was a pretty badass story.”

“It’s ‘dux femina facti.’”

“What?”

“You said, ‘feminam,’ not ‘femina.’ It’s ‘dux femina facti’--ablative of agent not accusative.”

“And this is why I need you to answer my emails more promptly! Or my texts. Or my calls. Really anything. You’re the Latin genius in our family, and although you tried really hard to make it so, Latin just did not end up as my second language. Blame whatever gene is responsible for language acquisition.”

“There needs to be a Dora for Latin,” Bellamy mused.

“Ah yes, I am sure that all of the classic myths of Zeus fucking swans and augurs opening the chest cavities of birds to tell the future would be perfect for young children.” Octavia’s phone buzzed lightly against the table.

“Jasper and Monty?” Octavia nodded. “Go. I promise I’m fine. I’m just going to finish this beer, and then I’ll head home. Where are they camped out at?”

“Some bar across town--it’s new, but it’s right here.” She pulled out her phone and showed him the dropped pin that one of the boys had sent her. “It’s just slightly closer to their campus. I can take the bus over without even having to make any exchanges.”

“Alright, and I’ll pay for an Uber to get you back home or you could just stay with them.” She pulled a quick grimace. “Jasper still pining over you then?”

  
“Not sure. We were on okay terms this summer, but that was when it was so concrete that I was dating someone. Not sure how it will be now that I am not.” Bellamy nodded. “But either way, I’ll let you know when I get there, when I’m leaving, and where I am staying.”

“Good girl.”

“You sure you’re fine to be left alone?”

“Honestly O: Go have a good night! I know you come home to see me, but you have friends as well and you deserve to hang out with them. And you know I’m going to be totally boring and annoying the rest of the night so you may as well get out of my hair.”

Octavia threw back the rest of her whiskey sour and casually glanced over to the bar. “Well, maybe something will come along and cheer you up. Some blonde’s been checking you out ever since she walked in.” She threw down a few ones on the table. “Whatever you do, give the bartender a really nice tip since you practically growled at her when we walked in.” She strode away, crossbody bag whipping behind her like a forgotten tail.

Bellamy returned to nursing his IPA and took out his phone. He could text Miller and tell him to come out, but at this point, Bellamy honestly wasn’t entirely sure that he wanted to be out anyway. He had reached the first ‘L’ in his name when she came over.

“What are you drinking? I’m pretty sure I owe you at least one for your trouble.”

He looked up to see Clarke fucking Griffin standing over his table. He swallowed the last half of his beer in two gulps and looked up. “Woodford. Neat. Make it a double.”

She looked at his empty beer glass, back at him, raised an eyebrow, and walked towards the bar. Bellamy noticed she was wearing an Arkadia High sweatshirt, so he assumed she was at the game. Well, that and her knowledge of how the game went gave it away. He couldn’t imagine her just wearing jeans and a sweatshirt out of her own volition. She seemed far too uptight for that.

Clarke returned to the table and slid to where Octavia had been sitting. She passed him the amber liquid, and he took a gentle sip. She flicked the lime off of the lid of her glass and into her gin and tonic.

“Look, I never meant to. . .” She stopped speaking when she caught his eye, “I mean, it was never my intention to. . .”

“Well of course it wasn’t your fucking intention.” He kept his voice level and cool. It was the same voice he used when he was disappointed with his teams after practices that went awry. “Who’s to say that I wouldn’t have made the exact same decision as you, had I been in your situation?”

“I’m really just trying to. . .”

  
“Just worry about how the kids do in bio, Princess.” He took a smooth sip of bourbon and waited for her reply. Her cheeks had become pinker and her eyes had narrowed ever so slightly.

“Listen, I was just trying to come over here and apologize because that was a rough game and I am sure that some of that was certainly because I was trying to get your ‘superstar player’ to do this novel thing and actually _learn_ something at _schoo_ l, but if you’re not even going to let me say that, I will say my piece instead. Leadership skills are taught, and if you worked on developing them in all of your players, they would run around like chickens with their heads cut off the second that the natural heads off the field. There were a lot of talented kids on that field tonight, Bellamy. Some of them were on our team. Why weren’t any of them able to pick up the mantle?”

With a flick of her head, she was up and across the room before Bellamy even had the chance to respond. He didn’t care. He stroked the sides of the glass for a few more minutes, taking leisurely sips until he just couldn’t sit there anymore. He extracted a few stray bills from his pocket, threw back the liquor, and was out the door before he let his anger get the best of him. 

***


	4. I'll Run Slow For Your Soft Hands

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm still chugging away at this piece, and I am unsure how slow of a burn it is going to end up being. There is also a chance that this rating might change to something slightly more adult-- thoughts?

### I’ll Run Slow for Your Soft Hands

Octavia evidently had decided to take him up on that Uber the night before, and she slunk into his room not too long after the sun rose. She gently poked his nose with her pointer finger. “Wanna come join me?”

Octavia was a strange, alien, superhuman-- this was something Bellamy had decided upon long ago, and her strange, post-going-out, hungover runs were the greatest indication of this. After a night of gallivanting on the town with old friends, most humans prefer laying in bed until a greasy breakfast was promised. Sure, Octavia liked a post-binge breakfast just as much as the next person (more if there were chocolate chip pancakes involved), but she enjoyed it most after a quick jog and a hot shower.

She’d been trying to convince him it was the best thing since the first time she got drunk.

Hence the gentle poke. 

The first noises that Bellamy made were not quite human. The next were incomprehensible due to being said directly into his pillow.

“Come on, Bells, you know you feel better after you do!”

This was not entirely true. Sometimes it worked wonders, and Bellamy actually managed to get some work done on days that he would have otherwise written off as worthless. Other times he vomited into the bushes a mile in. 

However, Bellamy wasn’t even hungover after his short evening, so he slowly swung his legs over to the side of the bed. Octavia ruffled his hair. “I’ll give you a few,” she announced, and bounded into the hall.

After a groggy cup of coffee, some scrolling through the news while sitting on the toilet, and lying on his back in the middle of the carpet, Octavia decided that she had given more than “a few,” snatched the mug from his hand and went to stand in the open doorway. Bellamy followed, leisurely, mumbling about his routine. When they made it out the door, the pair took off without ever really establishing which of their routes they were going to take, just assuming that the other would protest if it was not what was desired. 

Both ran with earbuds in— iPhone strapped securely into her belt, old school shuffle that had survived a few bouts with the laundry machine clipped to his shorts. They weren’t really talking runners— they were barely even talking siblings at certain points. Bellamy would never admit it to his headstrong sister out of fear that she would stop asking him to join out of spite or to prove something, but it did make him feel better to know that his sister was not running alone. 

So it was a bit unusual when O popped a headphone out a mile in and mentioned that there was no one in bed with him that morning. 

“What-- couldn’t wait until breakfast to ask?” He kept his eyes forward as they connected with a local greenway. 

“Still just hoping I get a new mom someday…” This had been her canned response since she had headed off to college— once it stopped hurting so badly that they had lost their mother and once Bellamy’s paternalism had become endearing rather than irritating to her. 

“Miller isn’t enough for you?” he responded with false insult, “I will let him know.”

“Yeah, yeah, I love Miller don’t worry.” The earbud went back in, and they continued at their steady clip. 

The next ten minutes passed easily, and they both automatically tapped the mile marker that indicated their typical turn around point and loped back toward home. As they turned, Bellamy watched his sister narrow her eyes, and then turn to him and grin. That meant only one thing: she was about to race him, and even though she was disadvantaged by a supposed hangover, he was really not in the mood. He braced himself for the inevitable pick-up in speed, but it didn’t happen. 

A few seconds later he realized why: A blonde ponytail bobbed closer, and, Christ, the legs on this girl. He looked back at Octavia and rolled his eyes: she knew he had a thing for runner girls. 

But as they got closer, he realized there was something deeply wrong: This was the same Clarke-- the same Ms. Griffin he had been dealing with. He picked up his pace without even meaning to-- his blood boiling, his face feeling much hotter than it should for the brisk fall day. 

He wanted to keep his eyes trained forward as they passed, but he could not help it, and they made eye-contact. She smiled sweetly-- smugly?-- and kept moving forward. It was no more than a glance. It burned through his chest. 

He barely noticed when they reached their door. 

*****

When Clarke had moved out to Arkadia, Raven had promised her it wasn’t too small of a town. That there was plenty to do: fun bars to explore, breweries popping up all the time, lovely greenways, and fantastic hiking within an hour or two’s drive.

But evidently it wasn’t big enough to avoid running into your nemesis (Nemesis? Clarke had a nemesis? That sounded dramatic) at one of said bars and on said greenway within twelve hours. 

She flopped on the ground of her apartment and opened her splits for her run and shrugged. If having a nemesis meant that the middle mile of your long run was fifteen seconds faster than any of the others, then maybe it was worth it. Plus, the second half seemed to go by more quickly than usual, her mind preoccupied, replaying the encounter from the night before. 

How could a game be such a big deal? Every school Clarke had attended had idolized football just like Ark did, and Clarke enjoyed it, sure, especially the spectacle of it all, but she never really got it. 

She flopped back, pulling a knee up to her chest. Honestly, she found tennis to be more exciting-- it went back and forth so quickly, and you could always distract yourself to another court when one game felt dull. Hockey was fun too-- both field and on ice-- moving quickly, and there always seemed some imminent threat of real violence rather than the almost staged violence feeling of football. 

However, Clarke had seen the picture of Bellamy in the glass case that constituted their sports hall of fame at the Ark, and she had to admit, if she had been in high school with him, maybe she would have seen more of football’s appeal at a younger age. 

And he had aged well, she thought, as she started her next pot of coffee. She was glad he had been running in the opposite direction-- if he had passed her, she would have felt the need to keep up, and she doubted she was able to keep his pace. 

As Clarke wandered into the shower, Bellamy slipped to the back of her mind as she started making a mental task of what she had to grade and errands she needed to run, but when she went out to the grocery store, she did double-check every head of dark curls that came into her line of vision.


	5. It's a Sin the Way I Dig My Heels In

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I keep thinking this is going to become more adult, and then I get caught up in writing banter, so we will see. We are now firmly in the part that I have been writing recently, so hopefully the tone hasn't/doesn't change too much.
> 
> Also, I'm a teacher (if you hadn't already figured that out) and faculty meetings are just about the worst thing ever. Any other teachers out there agree with me?

### It’s a Sin the Way I Dig My Heels In

As always, Clarke arrived at Tuesday morning’s faculty minutes ten minutes early, this time burdened with a carrier dangerously full of three large coffee cups. She headed straight to where Eric Jackson was already sitting at their usual table and deftly removed his vanilla latte from its cardboard clasp. He opened a donut box in her direction, one sticky ring indicating that their donor had sampled the goods already.

“We’re going for the sweet route this week?” Clarke asked.

“You know that Raven is on food duty next week, which means that we will probably end up with breakfast burritos from some random hole-in-the-wall place, so yeah, sweets this week.” He took a sip from his coffee, grimaced, and removed the lid to let it cool further. 

“Fine by me,” Clarke plucked a shiny blueberry cake donut from the box, “I’ll never complain about a donut.” She took a bite, and her face and a thumbs up expressed her approval of this shop’s selection. “How are things going over in chem?”

As he went off on a tangent about a lab disaster involving a kid asking how to read a thermometer (“You’re a junior for heaven’s sake! Figure it out!”), Clarke reflected on how lucky she was to end up in a department with a relatively young staff that genuinely cared about their students and wanted to try new things. As a first-year teacher, she had messed up so many times, but she always had Raven or Eric to assure her she wasn’t totally destroying these kids’ figures at every turn. 

As Eric launched into an explanation of how he was planning on using virtual models to explain chemical structures, Raven ambled up and smoothly took her seat on Clarke’s left. “‘Sup, nerds?” Eric continued with his story. “Okay, we have exactly three minutes before we have to be teachers, so please entertain me with something else.”

Unfortunately, they never really got to “something else,” because at that very moment, a certain freckled nemesis walked in front of their table. “Hey, Jackson. Reyes. Princess,” he calmly said with a head nod to the first two and an eyebrow raise to the third. 

“Good morning, Bellamy,” Raven responded in a sing-songy voice. As he walked away, she turned to Clarke, “Princess? What was that all about?”

Clarke sighed and rolled her eyes before taking another bite of her donut. “Ah, well, Coach Blake and I may have some disagreements about a student’s performance in my class. Are you friends with him?”

“Friends?” Raven snorted. “Girl, I basically bribed you to move her so that I would have more friends. You know all my friends-- all my friends are your friends. But friendly acquaintances? Sure.”

“He’s a nice enough guy,” Eric nodded along with assent. Clarke opened her mouth to ask more, but of course, that was the moment that Thelonious decided to start their faculty meeting.

As Clarke felt her eyes started to glaze over as emergency evacuation procedures were reviewed for what felt like the fourth time in just the first few months (and this was her first year-- how did veteran teachers bring themselves to attend these things, nonetheless without the draw of donuts and coffee), she felt her phone buzz in her lap. Raven had texted her.

“Is this all still related to that Murphy stuff?” 

Clarke surreptitiously slipped her phone under the table and tapped out a quick “yep” to her neighbor. A few seconds later, she added, “I still wonder if I should have put him on academic probation or just let it slide.”

“No. Don’t doubt yourself like that. Didn’t you say that his lab work was significantly better last week?”

Clarke put her phone down and looked at her friend. She mouthed, “Fine,” before pretending to listen to the tornado drill procedure again. But texting during faculty meetings was like peeing on nights of heavy drinking: You didn’t feel any need to until you did it once, and then after that, it felt impossible to stop. She returned to her phone and scrolled until she reached the “Science Nerds” group chat. “Do these meetings ever have any purpose?” She felt satisfied as the bubble turned that glorious blue.

  
She watched as her compatriots saw the text and started responding without letting their eyes leave the front of the room. But when she checked her phone with the next buzz, she was surprised to see it was neither of them who had texted her, but rather a new email. 

From  [ bblake@acs.k12.tn.us ](mailto:bblacke@acs.k12.tn.us) : “Shouldn’t you be paying attending to these procedures rather than texting? Seems like a bad model for our students.” She almost audibly chuckled when she realized that his default signature “Sincerely, Bellamy Blake” was still attached to such an insincere message.

Without even thinking, she responded, “Couldn’t I say the same about you at this moment? Insincerely, Clarke Griffin.” She slyly looked over her shoulder to shoot him a glare. Challenge accepted. 

She didn’t have to wait long for a response, swiping up to ignore Eric and Raven bantering back and forth, taking bets on which faculty member would ask a stupid question first. 

“Well, yes, but you see, I am a mere coach rather than an esteemed teacher, and that means you are held to a higher standard than I am. Cordially, Bellamy Blake.”

Honestly? She didn’t have a response to that. By putting himself at a lower status than she, he had won. If she agreed, she would seem overly rude and condescending, but if she tried to contradict what he said, she knew she would run into a wall quickly. Plus, she didn’t want to reassure someone who had made her life harder that his place in the school mattered. 

She flipped back to her texts and placed her bets in line with Eric’s. Their banter distracted her for the rest of the meeting-- that, the glances they shared when Raven won the bet, and the comfort of a warm cup of coffee and another donut. 

As she packed up her things at the end of the meeting ready to head to her first class, she caught eyes with Bellamy as he crossed the room. He held her gaze and a smug grin for just touch longer than what she would have liked, and she knew that she was going to be drafting a response in her head all day.

***** 

The football team loved Tuesdays: It was the one day they could be assured they wouldn’t be called in for a lifting session or a quick video session. Bellamy, on the other hand, dreaded them. He knew that no one would notice if the football coach of all people skipped out on faculty meetings, but that was part of the reason why he went. Even if they were total wastes of time and never failed to put him in a bad mood for the rest of the day. 

However, that Tuesday morning had been slightly more entertaining than usual. Mostly because he loved seeing the gentle pink that the back of Clarke’s neck turned when he realized that he had emailed her. Yeah, she had shot him that Clarke Griffin trademarked “threatening glare,” but seeing that slight blush before the glare was like seeing her secrets revealed. He had gotten to her, the glare was a defense mechanism rather an attack. 

And this time, it looked like he had gotten the last word. 

Plus, he had a sub job today, which was always appreciated for the extra cash, but today, he got to sub for his favorite former teacher.

Most of the time when he got a subbing job, he was just expected to put in a movie and make sure that the kids weren’t making out in the back of the room, or hand out a worksheet and hope that they were either not cheating or doing it in a way that they wouldn’t get caught and he wouldn’t get blamed.

But Bellamy had been a favorite of Mr. Pike’s back in seventh grade, so he was always given a bit more freedom when he ran those classes. 

He almost laughed when he saw what he had been given for today: “We are still studying the ancient world. Watch the following clips of  _ Alexander _ ,  _ Troy _ , and  _ 300 _ and explain exactly what is inaccurate about these movies. I believe I left out any clips that contain sex or gratuitous violence, but I am pretty sure you are more familiar with these films than I am and could do an even better job of choosing clips.” Attached were class lists, times, and a list of other duties to complete for the day. 

Thank god for this man. Not only had he chosen something that the students would find entertaining, but it would be a great opportunity for Bellamy to remind himself of what he had gone to school for all those years ago. In fact, the day went by quickly-- one class blurred into the next until he had to dash back to the high school for practice. 

And actually, practice went the best it had since the untimely departure of John Murphy. Maybe the princess as right, because some of his seniors were finally starting to step up to the plate and keep them all in line. 

Nothing ended his day better than seeing that he had an unread email when he flopped down on his couch with a sloppily created pb&j in hand at the end of the day. From  [ cgriffin@acs.k12.tn.us ](mailto:cgriffin@acs.k12.tn.us) : “But I thought football was everything at the Ark? Wouldn’t that put you above me?”

It had taken her all day to generate a two-sentence response. John Murphy would be back on the field in no time. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PS: not real email addresses, obviously, but modeled off of what school emails look like, so they very well might belong to someone out there.


	6. A Mind That's Never Vacant

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which I continue to make both Bellamy and Clarke (and everyone else in this story) a complete nerd because I am giving them all of my hobbies, and I am, in fact, a total nerd.
> 
> It's been a while since I played Red Dragon Inn, so excuse me if I messed up some of the rules!
> 
> Oh, and rating is changing-- watch it and leave if that's not your thing.

### A Mind That's Never Vacant

To be honest, the rest of the week wasn’t half as bad as Bellamy expected it to be. Sure, Murphy wasn’t back on the field quite yet, but his sporadic emails with Clarke had contained hints that maybe things weren’t as bad as they seemed. In fact, below Thursday’s sassy retort to his comment that English was a far more important subject than science, she included the postscript:

“PS: Might have to change our friend John’s tutor soon. I can no longer tell if he is spending time there because he has to or because he wants to. And trust me: It’s not because he has a newfound interest in Mendelian genetics.”

For someone with a life as boring as his was, responding to these pithy emails had been a great exercise for his brain. It reminded him of Octavia’s senior year when she was emerging from the overwhelming grief of losing their mother and moving back into teenage resistance. Any sign of weakness was something to be exploited, and he had to be on his guard at all times. 

Plus, that Friday’s game was against the Deeciton Presidents. They weren’t the easiest team in their conference, but it was nothing like the Grounders of the week prior. And with the team adjusting to Murphy’s absence, the game turned out okay. Did they win by as large of a margin as he wanted them to? No, but he was grateful to see Atom nail every field goal, without which they would have clearly lost. And a win was a win; he wasn’t going to complain too hard about it. 

He felt far more energized when he woke up on Saturday morning, so he decided to head out for a run. Though he would never admit it, he kept his eyes peeled as he looped through the greenway and a nearby park for a certain blonde, wondering if her neck turned the same delightful shade of pink as she worked out. 

He figured it was for the best when they didn’t cross paths; he truly wasn’t sure what he would have done if they had. But he was still feeling energy jittering through his veins as the afternoon progressed, so when Miller asked if he wanted to head to a nearby board game bar, rather than making a lame excuse about being tired, he decided to join. 

As they packed into the bar, hoping to just grab a box of Sagrada or maybe even Pandemic (though it was definitely not as much fun with only two people), Bellamy found himself being waved down by a brunette in the corner. As he caught Raven’s eye, he watched Clarke’s curls bounce around her shoulder as she jerked her head in his direction. Before she could turn back and make eye contact with her friend, Raven gestured them over.

“Hey, some people from school are over there-- mind if we go say hi?”

Miller rolled his eyes. “As long as you guys don’t talk about school stuff the whole time.”

“I’m not even saying that we stay over there; I just can’t ignore them, you know?”

Unfortunately, it appears that Raven in fact did want them to stay over there. “Great-- if you guys are with us, they’ll let us grab an additional set of this and we’ll get more character options.” She was pulling over chairs and waving down one of the workers before they had the opportunity to disagree. Bellamy found himself stuck between Clarke and Raven while Miller was shoved across the table from him in between Raven and Eric. Bellamy quickly introduced Miller to everyone, but he doubted Raven would remember his name in four seconds as she was focused on just one thing, “Have you guys played Red Dragon Inn before?”

Neither of them had. Bellamy tried to pay attention as Raven dove into the rules and started passing them an assortment of cards, but he also pulled his phone out under the table. 

“To  [ cgriffin@acs.k12.tn.us ](mailto:cgriffin@acs.k12.tn.us) : If you won’t let my team be the best it can be, are you going to let me win here?”

He watched as she flipped her phone upright on the table and looked at his message without even opening her phone. She leaned gently towards him and whispered, “Never” under her breath.

Bellamy found himself fumbling for the rulebook once the game got underway. Miller followed Raven’s instructions, and not knowing anyone else at the table and demanded that Bellamy’s half-elf bard drink. Bellamy watched as his character’s sobriety slipped, and unfortunately, it appeared that Miller started a trend, and everyone ordered their drinks towards Bellamy and used their action cards against him. He was the first one out, and he took it as an opportunity to flag down one of the workers and finally order drinks for Miller and him. 

He watched the rest of them play, strategizing for the next round and sipping on his cold beer. As it narrowed down to a challenge between Clarke and Eric, he found his first beer empty, and as his second one arrived at the table, he proposed to the group: “Why don’t we drink alongside our characters this time?”

  
  


*****

Now, Clarke was never one to back down from a challenge. But she also generally knew her limits, and she knew that she was a lightweight. But somehow, she found herself seconding Bellamy’s idea. 

Immediately afterward, she caught Raven staring at her with a perplexed look on her face, but after meeting Clarke’s eye, she just shrugged and got down to business.  “Okay, so I am assuming we aren’t going to be mixing drinks like these hooligans in this game, plus I’m pretty sure they don’t serve enchanted elf wine here, so how are we doing this?”

“Well, we’ve all got beer here,” Bellamy replied, “So I think it’s just you drink for the number of seconds that your character drops on your card.”

“Seems lame,” Miller jumped in, clearly getting into the idea, “That’s not all that long. I vote we double it. And no fake sipping.”

“I doubt any of us are doing this so quickly that we are going to be wasted before the end of the game, so I agree with Miller,” Eric jumped in with a slight slur to his words that Clarke knew meant he was either nervous or slightly tipsy.

The rules decided upon, a few characters changed, the second round of the game began. No one ganged up against Bellamy this time (an act that she had not planned but felt immensely satisfying in the first round), and they moved along quickly. Clarke found her drink disappearing more quickly than it usually would on a board game night, and soon they were all ordering another drink-- in real life, not in the game. 

Eric was out first this time by Clarke’s hand. “Revenge!” she exclaimed as he moved his token to zero. “I’m out,” he said regretfully.

Unfortunately, Clarke only made it one more round, and Bellamy was not far after that. As Miller and Raven got into a gambling contest for what would undoubtedly finish the game, she felt a warmth against her leg. She looked down and noticed that Bellamy’s leg had slipped into her personal space. “Manspreader,” she thought to herself, and she considered calling him out on it, but the warmth of his leg was nice, and even she couldn’t deny, he had rather nice thighs. 

She let her revel in this warmth for a few moments, but then she decided this was too good of an opportunity to pass up. Clarke pulled out her phone and swiped to the email she received earlier and sent her one-word response.

Bellamy opened his phone mid-buzz (she could basically feel it vibrate from his leg to hers) and read it. Then, with his head resting calmly in one palm, he took a lazy sip of his beer, smiled at her, and gently nudged his leg one inch closer to hers. In return, she took a long drink of her beer and pushed back.

An empty glass slammed on the table and the two legs returned to their respective locations. Raven had declared her victory and called for one final game of the evening. 

Clarke looked at her curly-haired nemesis, but his eyes were back forward. “I’m in-- I haven’t had a chance to win yet,” he responded.

“Why not! It’s not a school night!” Eric jumped in, definitely a bit more tipsy than usual. 

More drinks were ordered, and with a few games under his belt, Bellamy became a threat to fear in the game. Clarke watched as he casually would lean across the table to look at the different characters’ attributes before returning to his deck and hitting them with the card that would affect them the most. About halfway through a fierce round of gambling, she felt his foot slide up closer to hers. She looked over to see if this was intentional or not, but his eyes were buried in his deck and the rule book was open in his lap. 

Before she knew it, everyone was out, and she and Bellamy were throwing coins and drinks on the table like this was the most important game of the night. She felt her blush rising, she felt exhilarated, and she was most certainly past tipsy now. 

As her character finally slipped into unconsciousness, Bellamy leaned forward, his face closer to hers than it had ever been. “I always come out on top,” he asserted, and she could smell the beer on his breath and some woodsy scent she assumed must be his cologne. 

“Well, that’s good for the night, I think,” Raven announced, and Bellamy’s eyes slowly pulled away from Clarke’s. 

“Ugh, it looks like I am being blackmailed into this being just the start of my night rather than the end,” Miller added, waving his phone, “Bellamy: I’m going to go meet up with James; you want to join or are you cool to head home?”

“I’m probably good. It’s not a far walk.”

“Oh,” Raven leaned in, suddenly interested, “You guys live near here?”

Oh no. Clarke knew exactly where this was going. 

“Yeah, we’re up the trail about a quarter mile. Why?”

“Oh perfect. Clarke lives just past that, and she always insists on walking home when Jackson or I could easily have our rides stop and drop her off, so one of us always ends up walking home with her because she is such a pain.” Raven finished this with a toothy grin at Clarke. Clarke grimaced back at her.

“You’re saying the princess needs an escort back to her castle?” Bellamy smirked in her direction, “I think I may be able to play the knight in these circumstances.”

And before she knew really what was going on, Clarke was on the trail back to her apartment with a tall guardian.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Sorry. Rating isn't changing for this chapter. But it's coming).


	7. Look In the Long Nights

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the lack of update yesterday! The assignment my kiddos have been working on has actually developed into speeches of a reasonable length, and they're doing pretty well and actually care (probably because they're so bored), so I spent yesterday giving them feedback on their first drafts and having writing conferences via Zoom. I miss them.
> 
> I didn't have the chance to write yesterday, and Chapter Eight is getting long-- it might get broken into two. There might be another day break before the next update, but it's coming. 
> 
> And sorry that I keep making these two into such weirdos. I don't know where I get these ideas.

### Look In the Long Nights

###    


Bellamy quickly realized that he had miscalculated. What he thought was going to be a good idea-- another opportunity to pester Clarke-- turned into a different kind of situation when she swung her jean jacket around her shoulders and sauntered out the door of the bar.

Because at that moment, Bellamy remembered exactly how those legs had propelled her forward on the trail when he had seen her a week ago. And when that had happened, he had only seen the view from the front and in movement. But now, those muscular legs were being viewed from behind, emerging from leather boots and rising to a round ass accentuated by high-waisted denim that tapered in at a narrow waist.

Fuck.

As their friends got into various strangers’ cars to journey across the town, he made sure to stay next to Clarke as to not continue to be distracted. They walked for a few paces in silence. 

“You know,” she said as they turned onto the pedestrian path that ran along the river, “you really don’t have to walk me all the way home. I do it all the time.”

Bellamy looked over at her, the glow of nearby businesses bouncing off the water and reflecting in her fair hair. He understood the protective nature of her friends-- he imagined it was the same fear that pushed him out of bed to run with Octavia on hungover mornings. Logically, the chances were low, and they were more than capable of taking care of themselves, but why not lower those chances even more? 

“It’s no big deal-- if we are walking for another twenty minutes, I’ll start earning my steps for tomorrow.”

Clarke looked over at him, a chuckle escaping from her lips, and popped the collar of her jean jacket to protect against the breeze that picked up near the water. “That’s what I always say to Raven when she insists on a drive.”

“Huh, so I guess the competitive streak doesn’t end with board games?”

“What’s the purpose of trying something if you’re not going to give it your best shot?”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” he replied, running his hands through his hair. “You know, if you really felt that way, you’d give me Murphy back. He’s part of our best shot.”

She punched him gently in the arm. “Hey. I didn’t take John away from you. He did that all on his own.” 

“I know, I know, he’s a piece of shit.”

“I’m glad we agree on that one,” she responded, laughing in earnest now. “He’s really not dumb, you know, which is the most frustrating part. He’s just been able to slide by on charm and low expectations.”

“Sounds familiar.”

Clarke stopped where she was and put a hand to her chest. “Wait, you’re telling me the star quarterback used to use his fame around school to get away with things?”

Bellamy planted his feet in front of her, “Who says it’s all in my past?” He smiled his full-brights smile, and she gave him a suspicious smirk in response before continuing forward. “Also, I’d love to hear more about this girl you have convinced to wrangle our favorite monster.”

“Emori’s a good kid,” Clarke shrugged. “She figured it would look good on her resume to have some volunteer tutoring experience, and I wasn’t going to argue with that, plus she’s oddly obsessed with biology. I told her I’d let her take home the leftover owl pellets if she did it.” 

“And that didn’t like… raise red flags for you? A teenager who wanted to spend her free time pulling apart what is essentially owl vomit?”

“Nah, I was the same way as a kid. I used to love it when I found decaying animals in the woods behind our house because they made for interesting still lifes. I’d spend all day out there with a pencil trying to get the way that the light refracted against the skull of a dead squirrel.”

“That’s definitely weird.” But also, genuinely honest. He had never heard anyone doing anything like that before, and it was refreshing to hear something real from someone other than Octavia or Miller. 

“What-- like you have no weird childhood stories?” she asked, stepping a little closer to him. Bellamy was reminded of how delightfully warm her leg had felt against his back at the bar.

“Oh, no-- I definitely do,” he responded, looking her straight in the eye, “It really just depends on where you want me to start.”

“Something early or something with permanent consequences.”

“Easy. My sister is quite a bit younger than me, and we have different dads, so I guess in some sort of way to make me feel like I wasn’t forgotten, my mom let me name her.”

“Oh no,” Clarke smiled at him.

“Oh yes. And thankfully I was obsessed with ancient history at the time and nothing stranger than that-- like dead animals in the woods-- but I burdened my infant sister with the name Octavia.”

Clarke laughed. “Okay-- that could be way worse. In some ways, it’s better than something more obviously nerdy. You could have been obsessed with _Lord of the Rings_ and named her Galadriel or something.”

“Oh, I was obsessed with _Lord of the Rings_ , don’t you worry.” He was also fairly impressed that she hadn’t needed any further explanation of where the name Octavia came from and that she had dropped another nerd reference without appearing to think much about it. However, he guessed he should probably change the assumptions he had of this girl from the first time he met her considering they had just ran into each other at a board game bar.

“Was that your sister running with you the other week, or was that a girlfriend?” The question seemed innocuous, but he found his mind running to the other possibility.

“Yep. That was O. She whirls into town and makes my life a lot more exciting every few weeks. Makes me pretend I’m back in college.”

“We can’t do that anymore. We’re old. I’ll feel the four beers I drank tomorrow, and I used to drink that much before leaving my apartment in college.”

“Oh, come on-- how old are you? This is your first year of teaching, isn’t it?”

“How old do you think I am?” She skipped in front of him and struck a pose. 

He did the math in his head quickly, trying to ignore that her shirt had ridden up ever so slightly to expose an inch of pale stomach. “I’m going to go with 23.”

“Not bad, but 25 actually. Did a year of med school before switching tracks into teaching.”

“Huh. Wouldn’t have guessed someone with the ability to get into med school would end up teaching bio in the small town. With that sort of background, shouldn’t you be at some fancy boarding school?”

“Maybe, but I ended up here instead.” She examined him closely. “Okay, so I know when you graduated high school based on the trophies in the hall, so I’m going to guess 29.”

“Very close. 28.” 

“You still look the same as you did in high school.”

He side-eyed her. “Now, I know that’s not true.”

“Okay, maybe not exactly, but you’re pretty close.” She stopped in front of one of the new developments that had popped up along the river in the past two years. “Well, this is me,” she said, Vana White-ing toward the entire building. 

“Alright, princess, at least let me complete my mission by opening the door for you.” She swiped a card across the reader by the door, and as he heard it unlock, Bellamy pulled it open. He dipped into a bow as she walked in.

He was about to let the handle slip from his fingers and turn back the way he came, but he looked back and saw Clarke still standing in the atrium, pondering something.

She appeared to come to a decision. “You like games, right?”

“Yeah? We just spent a few hours playing them?”

“What about chess?”

“Yeah sure-- I haven’t played in a while, but yeah.”

“Do you have strong feelings against cheap wine?” At this point, it was clear that she had a plan; the corners of her mouth were curling up into a self-assured grin.

“I have very positive feelings about cheap wine.”

“In that case: We are already more tipsy than we should be, so I challenge you to a game of chess. Loser replaces the bottle of cheap wine we drink.”

“Oh it’s on,” he responded, letting the door close, but now behind him as he walked into the warmth of the apartment building. He tried to not stare too much at her ass as she walked in front of him up the stairs, but he was pretty sure that she caught him at least once. 

Clarke’s apartment was full of warm browns and greens, and she slid two stemless wine glasses toward him with a bottle of wine he recognized from the shelves at Trader Joe’s. She ordered him to uncork and pour the wine as she cleared the table and laid out the board. He smiled in contentment when he realized that one glass was emblazoned with “...because teaching” while the other had the emblem for Vanderbilt Medical School. Bellamy’s hand slipped slightly when he looked up to see Clarke leaning over the table organizing the chess pieces with a bit more cleavage revealed than was maybe appropriate. He quickly licked up the dripple of red that traced the “because teaching” glass, claiming it as his own.

He brought both the table, setting the other in front of her. Clarke took a long sip, smacked her lips, and raised her blue eyes to meet his in a fierce challenge. “Alright, since you’re my guest, I guess I’ll give you the first move.” 


	8. This Fire Won't Die in Your Eyes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey folks! I'm back, but my updates are probably going to be closer to every other day, mostly because my chapters might be getting longer which means they take longer!

### This Fire Won’t Die in Your Eyes

“The game’s afoot,” Clake thought to herself as Bellamy seated himself across the table from her and examined the pieces. She restrained a giggle at the Sherlock Holmes reference she had made to herself and then felt her eyes widen. She was tipsier than she had expected, and now she was seated from a very attractive man she had invited up into her apartment. 

What was he thinking? Was he expecting anything? From the way that he was gently tapping each of the pawns, there was maybe nothing more at stake than just chess. When she realized that, relief did not flow into Clarke’s veins like she thought it would. In fact, it was maybe, what-- disappointment?-- that she felt? 

"You lost in there?” Bellamy awoke her from her drunken internal monologue. He had moved. It was her turn.

Chess is certainly not a game you want to play drunk. It involves strategy, and, well, if Clarke’s record of ordering late-night breadsticks was any proof, strategy was not one of drunk Clarke’s strengths.

However, that is not to say she couldn’t use other forms of strategy. She chose a pawn almost randomly and slid it two spots forward. Then, she proceeded to shrug her jean jacket off onto the chair and leaned forward, hand in palms. She furrowed her brow in false concentration on the game, but she really focused on subtly bringing her elbows closer together, pushing her chest up and forward.

Hey, if it worked in beer pong, maybe it would work here. 

She wasn’t entirely sure if it was working as the next few moves passed in a blur. To be completely honest, Clarke may have accidentally moved her knight an extra space than she was allowed. And then a sock moved closer, sliding along the inside of her right foot, gently tracing her arch.

She looked up, but Bellamy looked intent upon sipping his wine, which was almost empty.

“Let me refill that for you.” Clarke stood up, examined the board from afar, and made a quick move before reaching for the bottle. She tried to keep focused on the bottle and glass to keep a steady pour, but she felt her eyes magnetized towards his. 

They stared at each other for a moment, the wine bottle’s angle moving upward and the flow slowing to a trickle as Clarke became distracted. And then she was struggling to get the bottle safely and securely on the table as he reached up and tangled his broad hands in her blonde curls. Their mouths met, and he was all heat and wine and just a bit of hops. 

Bellamy was standing now, and she didn’t know how or when but her back was pressed into the countertop, and it wasn’t quite intolerable, but it certainly was a distraction from this experience, so she brought her hands to his face and pulled it away from his.

“Everything okay, princess?” his voice sounded casual, but the slight downturn to the right side of his lip suggested that it was a genuine question.

“Well, I keep getting these irritating emails from this football coach at school, so no,” and before Bellamy had a chance to respond, she pushed forward into that little downturn, capturing it in a kiss and forcing them away from the countertop. 

They stumbled into the living room, which, noted, was only a few steps away-- her apartment wasn’t that big after all-- where Clarke backed him into the couch. 

She went to sit astride him, but he growled a bit and they somehow fumbled themself onto the floor, somehow fitting in between her couch and coffee table which was still full of labs she had started grading earlier in the day. She couldn’t help but laugh when Bellamy jolted up in shock as a journal flopped onto the floor by his feet. Soon, responding to her mood, he was also laughing, collapsing on top of her. 

“We’ve gotten ourselves into quite a predicament here, haven’t we?” Bellamy propped himself on one elbow, allowing the other hand to gently trace the outline of her jaw and run down her neck before tracing itself back up. “While the spell is somewhat broken,” she rolled her eyes in response to that, “just checking in-- we all good here?”

Clarke took in a deep breath and put on a serious face. She herself up into crossed legs as he did the same. He still laid on the floor, his nose just brushing against her knee, eyes looking up hopefully. 

How was this guy-- this guy who looked so innocent at this moment-- like there was nothing more in the world than her right now-- the guy who had irritated her so intensely just a few days beforehand. 

"Clarke. Would you like me to leave?” 

Oh fuck, she had gotten caught up in her head again (stupid drunk Clarke) and here there was a beautiful man in her apartment and she hadn’t been laid in, how long? Since long before arriving in Arkadia at least.

So really-- what was the harm? As Raven said, it wasn’t like they were friend-friends, so it wouldn’t ruin any friend group dynamics. And besides this academic probation issue, she had barely even noticed him before that moment. If this all went sour, she could likely get away with very limited awkward interactions until all was forgotten. 

“Clarke.” He was really sitting up now, awaiting her response.

She smiled and gave her teeth a slow swipe with her tongue before taking off her tshirt in a swift and smooth motion. 

“Well fuck” was his only response, and soon he was on top of her again, and she was giggling like she hadn’t in very long. “Can you stop laughing?” he asked in between kisses, “It makes it rather hard to make out with you.”

Clarke took his head her hands and let her tongue slide gently into his mouth before sucking his lower lip in between hers. His hands ran down her arms, her sides, lightly around her hips. Bellamy’s thumbs crept exploratively underneath the underwire of her bra, and his head dipped and his mouth gave its attention to her collarbones and the top of her cleavage. 

As his hands strolled back down to her waist, he let his fingertips run along the top of her jeans. He stopped at the button for them and looked up at her, his eyes holding a question. 

Clarke stuck her tongue out at him in response. He returned the gesture and then slowly undid the button and pulled down the zipper. As she lifted her hips to help with the process, she found herself flipped over, chest against her carpet as he pulled them off her legs.

“What-- did you wrestle in addition to football?”

“Nah,” he let his body fall back on top of hers and he spoke warmly into her ear, “I played basketball.” 

“Of course you played two sports.” His hand slid underneath her. It ran against her stomach and up to gently thumb a nipple over her bra before sliding back down to rest between her legs. He casually plucked at the elastic at the top of her underwear.

“Three,” he murmured. “Baseball in the spring.”

“Oh, I am so sorry to offend. Of course you did.” She wanted to sound sarcastic, but she knew her response came out breathy and almost desperate. His mouth landed at the intersection of her neck and jaw where they traced what felt like a lazy line but was most likely choreographed because it felt too good for it to be just chance. His hand dipped into her underwear, and she found herself pushing her hips up and back against him to give him better access. 

He lightly danced across her before sliding up to rest the pad of a finger against her clit. Light lines with his tongue down her neck turned into deeper kisses along her shoulder.

Clarke felt greedy for him, reaching back to rest her hand against his cheek behind her. And then she realized what was happening. She gave her hips a good buck against him, allowing her to put him on his back and land on top of him. 

She looked down at him, his hands behind his head, eyes dancing with amusement. “What?” she asked. 

“Nothing,” he responded with a smile. He was clearly game for whatever mood this was that they were currently running with. 

She leaned in closer, her nose almost touching his, her chest pressing against his. “Really?” she said and gave him a quick kiss. “Nothing?”

“Absolutely nothing,” and then her lips were back on his and was time even a thing anymore? She took big handfuls of his shirt and pulled it up over his head. They sat up for a moment, her sitting in his lap, mouths full of each other before she pushed him back to the floor. She let herself ghost over the growing hardness in his pants, the coarseness of his denim against her sensitive skin making it almost impossible to pay attention to anything else. 

Clarke let him pull aside her underwear to let one of his fingers swipe at the dampness that was emerging there. He didn’t even have to ask this time, she pulled away from him to make eye contact. “Please do.” 

And his finger slid smoothly inside of her, stroking and exploring. She bounced lightly against him as she took his earlobe in her mouth and let her teeth gently scrape against it. Bellamy’s breath grew heavier, and hers did as well. He removed his finger from her, only to rotate her off of him and back onto the carpet. He was back on her clit before she had a chance to complain, testing out a few speeds before keeping a surprisingly precise tempo that made it impossible for Clarke to keep her eyes open. 

As she felt herself unwind underneath him, Bellamy slid his finger back inside her to feel her pulse against him. He kissed her as her eyes opened. “Condom?” he asked.

“I have an IUD but I prefer two forms of protection.”

He barked with laughter. “Oh, it was never a question of if I was going to use one, the question was if you had any. Because otherwise, we might be SOL, princess.”

“Of course,” she shook her head as if it would clear it of the orgasm she had just experienced, “in my dresser.”

Bellamy leaped up, and she laid there for a second, palms up. Even her toes felt relaxed. Even though her sex life might have dissipated in the last year or so, she hadn’t been neglecting herself, but she had somehow forgotten how luxurious it felt to have someone push her to that edge. To have someone hover above her, clearly craving her. 

Speaking of which, she cracked an eye open to see Bellamy crouched beside her, a pose he was probably more likely to use when one of his players was potentially concussed rather than to a girl slowly returning to her body. “Do you want to come with me, Princess, or are we going to stay on the floor?”

“I think I’ll be able to make it over there,” she responded and then heaved her body up in a not particularly graceful way. Maybe it was the beer, maybe it was the banter, but after feeling like she had to play a game with him in every encounter up to this one, Clarke did not feel like she had to keep up any pretenses here. She didn’t have to summon any energy to saunter or strut, she could just follow him into her bedroom and admire the way that the texture of her carpet had left imprints on his muscular back. 

Bellamy paused to lean against the door frame, assessing the bed in front of him. “What, are you genuinely the princess and the pea? There’s gotta be 10 pillows here.”

“Only seven; come on, I thought the Ark’s math department served you better than that.” She pressed against him, craning upwards to lay sloppy kisses along his chest. He nuzzled into her hair, and as she pushed up onto her tippy toes, he bent down to seize her thighs in his hands and hoisted her up to his waist. Moving her attention to his neck, Bellamy easily carried her the few steps to the bed where they landed. 

Clarke reached behind her back to unclasp her bra, throwing it over to the general vicinity of her laundry hamper. Bellamy slowly blinked, and his thumbs traced the outline of her breasts. He kissed her deeply and then let his lips trail from her mouth and down to the newly exposed skin. His tongue flicked across her right nipple, and she couldn’t help but giggle. 

Bellamy looked up, an eyebrow raised. “You alright, there?” 

She was distracted by how cold her skin felt without his mouth on it, but she felt herself warming again as he let his body lean closer to her. She could almost sense the outlines of his muscles, and she let her fingers stroke the outline of his arm muscles. “Yeah,” she giggled again, letting her hands slide to run down his chest, “I’m more than good.” Her hands moved to his chest-- of their own accord, she sweared!-- where they moved down his sides and to his jeans. 

Clarke scooted herself so she had full access and then pulled at the button of his jeans. After she undid the zipper, he pulled them the rest of the way off and they quickly resumed their frantic explorations of each other. She reveled in the way that her thighs felt pressed against his and considered how much this was far superior to how they felt when there were two layers of denim in between them. 

As Bellamy moved to give attention to her left breast, Clarke hooked a big toe into the back of his boxer briefs and used it to start pulling them down. “If that’s where we’re going,” he mumbled, and with very little movement otherwise, he reached down to untuck his dick from the front. 

With no other barriers in place, Clarke was able to easily side them the rest of the way down. As she did so, Bellamy placed his hands on the edge of her underwear and said, “We gotta be equals here.” She lifted her hips, and he pulled them off efficiently, placing a hand back in between her legs as he did so. “Top drawer, you said?” he breathed. Clarke nodded, and he rolled away a second, returning already sliding a condom on. 

Bellamy kissed her softly, and Clarke reached down and guided him inside her. He paused and took her face in his hands. “Damn.” Damn was damn right, Clarke thought, and then he started moving and her vision started to blur again. 

As they settled into a rhythm, Clarke was able to catch his eye. She gave what she hoped was a saucy smirk but was probably more of a delusional drool. He gave a wolfish grin in reply and tweaked a nipple. She squeaked but pushed her hips upward slightly off the mattress and into him. Though she didn’t think of herself who had ever had or even wanted complete control over someone, Clarke couldn’t deny that there was something intoxicating about watching him slip slowly out of control. 

Bellamy wound a hand tightly through her hair, and his pace picked up slightly until she felt him pulse inside her. As he fell to her side, he twirled a single curl around an index finger. She threw an arm across his chest and gave him a gentle peck on the cheek. “You know,” she said, feeling her mischievous tone returning to her voice, “once I announce a student to be on academic probation, it’s actually in the dean’s hands as to when they get to return to sport.” 

Bellamy looked over at her with sleepy eyes, but amusement danced in them. “Are you telling me this was all for nothing then?” And then he took her in for a deep kiss. 

“All for nothing,” she responded, and they settled into a content silence. After a few moments, she rolled out of bed to take a quick pee and brush her teeth. She returned with a spare toothbrush in hand, which she thwapped against his chest. “If you’re going to stay, I will happily donate this.”

He examined the toothbrush before retreating to the bathroom himself. He returned a few minutes later and pulled his boxer briefs back on before flopping onto her bed, almost sending her flying out of it. Bellamy chuckled and pulled her up against him. “Having a spare toothbrush for visitors is very adult of you. Very not college.” 

“Don’t be too impressed-- I just went to the dentist last week.”

“If we were truly adults rather than drunk college kids, we would talk about this,” he mumbled into the crook of her neck. “But, as an adult playing at being a drunk college kid, it’s late and I’m tired.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” she responded.

Silence filled the room like a warm blanket, and soon Clarke heard the steady inhales that suggested Bellamy had fallen asleep before her. However, she did not have long to consider this as she too drifted off what felt like only seconds after.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so that covers the first sex scene I have ever written, so definitely tell me what you like/dislike!


	9. Can My Tongue Taste Truth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Howdy! It's been a minute, but I am now officially on spring break, and it's been nice here, so I tried to escape from my screen for a bit. I've got ideas on where I am going next, but I am a bit out of the schedule I was hoping to keep.

### Can My Tongue Taste Truth

Bellamy had not always been an early riser. He had been one of those kids who hit puberty early, so it was hard to wake up in elementary school, his mom pulling the covers off of him before she went to her shift at the store. He learned how to time everything perfectly so that he could still get to the bus when he heard the tell-tale screech of its door opening a few blocks away. 

Things only got worse there when Octavia was born. His mom was more exhausted, and he didn’t fare much better when he started to try to play the role his mother’s boyfriend should have been playing. But then his already almost invisible presence became smaller and smaller until one day he just wasn’t there. Bellamy never did find out if his mom had ever talked to him about moving out or if she just accepted it as an inevitability.

But once Bellamy taught O some basic tasks and she was able to complete them successfully, his life got back on track. He picked up the early morning shift at the 24-hour gas station and convenience store down the road, using the dregs of the coffee pots to wake himself up for morning lifts. After he made it to every shift on time his first year, the owner gave him a nod of approval and told him he could take a breakfast sandwich for free during each shift. They were rubbery and flavorless, but he mastered the exact amount of time that they needed to be thrown in the microwave to be palatable. And there was a guaranteed source of protein for the day. 

And he never quite shook that schedule from his system. It had served him well in college when he felt awake enough to get down to the gym and view video before morning conditioning, giving him more freedom to pick up shifts at the library in the afternoon. 

So Bellamy was not surprised that his eyes pulled themselves open at 6:30 the next morning. In fact, for him, this was late most days. What was more interesting was that the blanket covering him was far fluffier than usual and that he was not alone.

His options opened before him like flowers unfolding. Sure, Bellamy wasn’t entirely chaste, but he had run through many of the eligible options in Arkadia, so it had been a minute since he had to think about them. He usually did a good job of slipping out the night before, blaming it on an early morning practice or some other reason he needed to depart. 

He could slip out right now. Clarke seemed solidly in slumber next to him, and he could not say for sure whether she was going to feel good about this when she woke up. Barely moving, he scanned the room, spotting his discarded jeans and remembered that his tshirt had been left on the living room floor. 

Clarke sighed next to him, and as she rustled about, her ass nudged against his thigh. Leaving would be cowardly, he decided. Normally getting out of there before morning felt like an indicator that he did not care and was not going to pursue a relationship with whoever was in the bed with him, but in this case-- and he was certainly not saying that he wanted to pursue a relationship with Clarke-- it felt like he would be admitting to the way he figured she imagined him to be. It felt like proving her right, like defeat, and he wanted to prove her wrong in a way.

Another option was to get up and start coffee, maybe even breakfast? He certainly wanted coffee soon; that was usually something that happened before anything else. Breakfast felt a little desperate and also a little assuming though. 

Should he just pretend to be asleep? Hope that she was also somewhat of an early riser? He could probably lay in bed for thirty more minutes, maybe even doze off a bit for an hour, but after that, the caffeine-deprivation headache was going to hit and he was going to be very unhappy. This seemed like the most logical course of action, so he settled back in, pulling her soft duvet back over his shoulder and draping an arm over her waist. 

Bellamy floated in and out of that weird dreamscape that is not totally asleep but also not entirely in his control, replaying the moments from the night before. He remembered the haughty look Clarke gave him when they walked over at the bar to how that oddly mirrored the face she made as he had entered inside her. 

Next to him, Clarke’s movements became bigger and more decisive until suddenly an alarm went off and she leaned over to turn it off with an automatic practiced movement. Bellamy felt her sit up in bed next to him but maintained the illusion of his sleep. A finger ran softly across his forehead, brushing a curl to the side, and dammit if he didn’t feel himself getting hard at that simple touch. He let himself slide up to rest his head on her chest and opened his eyes to look up at her.

“Coffee?” she inquired. 

“Coffee.” She threw her legs over the bed and jumped in the bathroom where he heard the sound of her brushing her teeth. He grabbed his phone and checked the time-- 7:20, she must also be an early riser-- and saw he had a missing message from Miller. 

“You alive out there? I’m hoping yes because I’m too tired to run a manhunt right now.” He smiled and responded that he would be home soon before heading over to brush his own teeth.

He found Clarke in the kitchen, spooning what he recognized as a local roastery’s beans into a french press. “So, are you a cheap wine good coffee person?”

“I mean,” she responded, “they both serve very simple purposes. But I can tell the difference in one but not the other, so this is how I choose to spend my money. Disappointment of my mother’s life that I couldn’t tell you a merlot from a malbec if I tried.”

He took a seat at the table, picking up an abandoned rook from the floor and placing it back on the board. “If that’s the greatest disappointment your mother experiences, I think you’re doing alright.”

Clarke removed the now whistling kettle from the stove and poured the water on top of the grounds. He noticed that she had the same expression that she had when considering her first move the night before. She was thinking-- or strategizing. 

“Actually, my mom and I had a falling out for a while,” she seemed to decide to continue, “Didn’t talk for almost a year.”

“Oh.” He tried not to sound too surprised. Clarke seemed like she had her life all together, that with those blonde curls and blue eyes that nothing could have been too hard for her. That she never could have experienced anything like he had. 

“Not a really fun morning after coffee conversation, but yeah. We’re mostly better now, but we’re still working on things.” She examined the carafe. “Coffee’s gonna be a second, but I’m hungry and gonna throw some eggs on. You like eggs? Scrambled?”

Bellamy wondered if the change in topic was intentional or if this was just genuinely the way her mind worked. He found himself wanting to know more about this, but forced himself to croak out, “Scrambled’s fine.”

“You mind veggies in yours? I’ve got some kale in here.” She already had a handful of kale in a hand.

“If you’re going to cook for me, I’m not going to complain.” He wondered how they had so quickly settled into this scene of domesticity and watched as she threw a practiced assortment of seasonings into the pan. “Do you cook for all of your visitors, or am I a special case here?”

“You mean all of the nemeses I let into my bed?” She side-eyed him. 

He chuckled. “Nemeses?”

*****

The idea that he was her nemesis sounded so ridiculous yet so elegant coming out of his mouth. Clarke had no choice but to run with it now. “Yes; weren’t you aware? We are sworn enemies,” she said, brandishing a spatula.

“Star-crossed, one might say,” Bellamy responded, relaxing back into the chair and leveling his gaze to hers. 

“Oh no-- absolutely not. None of that Romeo-and-Juliet-Shakespearean bullshit here.” It did not escape her notice that she had adeptly swerved away from his earlier question. As comfortable as this moment might seem, she had already managed to quickly bring up and then sneak out of a conversation about her mom, and she wasn’t quite ready for this man to realize that her sex life was confined mostly to her imagination. He might start to think that he was special. 

Eggs were done just a moment later, and as she slid a steaming plate to him with a mug of warm coffee, he asked, “Well then, how did you end up in our fair Verona?”

Clarke took a sip of coffee and sighed. Did he really want to know? Or was he just filling the time that she had forced upon him in the morning after (admittedly, pretty dang good) sex? “Raven basically blackmailed me down here.”

“Alright, Reyes can be scary, but I can’t imagine that you didn’t have other opportunities in actual cities rather than this sad impersonation of one.”

“Raven was the one who made me consider teaching when I was clueless and lost in med school. So when a position opened up here right as I was getting ready to graduate from my program, it felt serendipitous. I applied, got it, and knew I had at least one friend here, so I went for it.”

Bellamy chewed for a second, looking off into space as if the answers to his questions were written there. “But why leave med school? If you don’t mind me asking. I know it’s hard, but having dealt with you, you don’t seem like one who would back down from a challenge.”

How honest should she be here? Clarke remembered the conclusion she came to the night before and figured that had worked out pretty well so far, so she just went for it: “I basically went to med school to please my mom. And then that was the year she went from being a functioning addict to a nonfunctioning one. A patient under her watch died and she was too high to notice. So, yeah, I felt a little untethered. Raven kept me tied down.” No need to mention that many of those calls were at 3 AM when Raven was in her first year of teaching-- something Clarke had not realized was such a sacrifice until she was living it herself. Clarke kept her eyes firmly on her mug of coffee, ignoring the eyes she felt boring into her from across the table. If this scared him off, then so be it. 

Bellamy spoke up what felt like eons later but was probably only seconds. “It sucks when parents don’t do their jobs as parents.” His tone was soft, and Clarke looked up to see his face filled with understanding more than pity. It was quite different from what she was used to. “I am sorry for that. And I am sorry for bringing it up on what otherwise should be a relaxing Sunday morning. You want to talk about it more or move on.”

“Move on,” Clarke replied, but then added, “but thanks for asking.”

And as easily as he had flipped her onto the bed the night before, the topic of conversation was changed, and Clarke felt herself enjoying this morning. When eggs were finished, another carafe of coffee brewed and consumed, and the dishes cleaned by Bellamy (he insisted), he finally made his way to the door. He sat in the doorway, lacing up his boots, when he looked up at her and said, “If this is what it means to be your nemesis, I hope it continues.” Before she could respond, he was up on his feet, had given her a confident kiss, and was out the door. 

Clarke stood there for a moment, wondering what her next move would be, when she realized he had gotten the last word this time. 


	10. I Dream of You When I'm Upright

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm hoping to stick to a chapter every other day for the foreseeable future!
> 
> PS: While I am a teacher, I actually don't teach biology (or any science), so the assignments I am making up for Clarke are completely made up.

### I Dream of You When I’m Upright

_ Sorry about this one. _

Bellamy had puzzled over Clarke’s text since he received it at ten that morning. He was subbing (more like supervising) an elementary art class, and he could barely take his eyes away from them for a second without a meltdown or something broken. What did she have to be sorry for? He had quickly scanned back through his texts to see if there was something he missed, but he hadn’t been able to pick up on any clues. And they’d only been texting since Sunday, and even that was intermittent, so even with his mind frazzled, he was able to reread each one at least three times. Sorry?

They hadn’t really spoken since he had kissed her at the door on Sunday morning. He gave her a nod at Tuesday morning faculty meeting and watched as Reyes elbowed her in the ribs when she saw them make eye contact. But he had just smirked and walked to his typical seat. He did not presume himself to be anywhere close to joining in on their morning breakfast tradition. 

Sorry about this one? This one? That implied that there was something else similar, but what? 

It kept his mind busier than it should have been, but the wildlings in the classroom kept him from being focused enough to actually respond with something sensical. So the text sat there, mocking him. 

The message became a little more clear when Bellamy finally got around to checking his email after lunch. In typical teenager fashion, Atom had constructed an email that included exactly one capitalized letter (and an incorrect one at that) and zero pieces of punctuation: “hey coach cant come to practice got in trouble in Science gotta go talk to wallace.”

Bellamy’s face heated up involuntarily, and he wrote and erased his response at least six times before he actually sent one demanding that Atom drop by quickly at the end of the day to explain. Another player out? How was he supposed to work under these conditions?

With only minimal paint under his nails and slightly more than he would have liked in his hair after class, Bellamy made it to the football office to find Atom slumped beside it. He opened the door and gestured the kid inside without a word. He followed the sulks. 

Bellamy tried to keep his voice cool. He knew from experience that teenage boys were often looking for a fight, so if you gave them something to fight, you were never going to get your way. “Would you like to tell me what happened, Atom?” Ending with the kid’s name was intentional, and Bellamy watched as Atom’s eyes sparked.

“She’s got it out for the team, Coach,” he hissed. “I just didn’t properly cite my sources, and then she accused me of plagiarism, and now I have to go explain it all to Wallace, and it’s just really not fair.” Atom ran a hand through thick hair, trying to appear unfazed, but the spew of words said something different about how he felt things were going. “First Murphy, now me. You’re not going to have a team by homecoming.”

It was certainly starting to feel that way. Atom wasn’t quite as key to the team as he considered Murphy to be, but he imagined from the outside that wouldn’t necessarily seem to be true. As the kicker, Atom was on the field, often by himself, taking the glory, rather than getting dirty in the turf and playing dirty behind the scenes like Murphy did. 

Clarke was right about what she had said while collapsed against his chest a few days earlier though: Once she referred an academic issue, it was out of her hands. Which meant if Bellamy wanted his team back full force, he had to go talk to Cage Wallace. And that was something he avoided whenever possible. 

So even though Bellamy’s foot twitched with rage under his desk, he just leveled his gaze at Atom: “Go to your meeting. I’ll hear back I’m sure. Now, I’ve got to get to practice.” Atom scurried out of that room, and Bellamy could already hear him telling his tale in the hall to the players passing him on the way down to the field. Bellamy closed his eyes for a moment. This was going to be another rough week.

However, as warmups began, another player emerged onto the field, five minutes late as usual. Murphy swaggered onto the field but then seemed to be distracted by something in the stands.

Bellamy wanted to shout at Murphy to get his lazy ass on the field or risk his starter status, but instead, he just watched as the girl Murphy went to greet bonked him in the head with a book (and what appeared to be a textbook at that-- yikes. Maybe Murphy should wear his helmet at all times) and even from the distance, Bellamy could see the girl’s mouth running at a million words per minute. 

Murphy seemed unbothered by this assault, and eventually just took the book from her hand, gave her a quick kiss, and then made a big show of propping the book right against the door into the gym. The girl seemed satisfied by this and left the stands.

Bellamy averted his eyes back to the field as Murphy began his course back over to the team. Murphy sidled up against his coach, his helmet still cocked against his hip. “How are we looking out there?”

“We’ve looked better; we’ve looked worse,” Bellamy replied flatly. He kept his eyes forward, determined to not give Murphy the satisfaction of his attention. “You back for a while now, or have you just been given a longer leash?”

“Oh, I’m back, Coach.” Even without looking at him, Bellamy could hear the smirk in his player’s voice. “Pulled a B on Friday’s quiz and a whole C+ on Monday’s test. We’re in the green.”

“Alright, well, let’s get you back on the field, and just stay on top of it.” Bellamy let his eyes flick to the book over at the door. “Though it looks like someone else has got that under control.”

“Anything for you, Coach,” and Murphy skipped-- legitimately skipped-- onto the field. Bellamy was pretty sure he could hear him greet the rest of the defensive lineman with “Did you bitches miss me?” 

Bellamy found a moment and pulled his phone out of his pocket. “If this was meant to be a trade, I can promise you, I got the better deal here, princess.” 

He felt his phone vibrate in response a few minutes later, but they were busy running plays, so he didn’t check it until the end of practice. Her response? “Why do your players have to make things so difficult for me?”

Bellamy started typing out a response as he walked to his car, but then he stopped and looked up at the school looming in front of him. He checked his shoes, noting that the dry weekend meant they were relatively clean. He wouldn’t track in that much dirt, so he may as well go hear the other side of the story, right?

Bellamy took the stairs two at a time, noting how quiet the halls felt at this time of day. What if she wasn’t even there? It was Thursday, and he was pretty sure that Wednesdays were science help hours days. He could never keep it straight though; he had never attended them himself-- darting straight from his last period class down to the field and then sprinting out to get his homework done and take a nap before the late-night shift. Help was for someone who had time, he figured, a luxury.

However, he could see Clarke’s blonde curls pulled back into a clip from the door as her eyes scanned down papers. He leaned against the doorway in what he was pretty sure could be considered a casual stance, and started to speak, “So…”

Clarke didn’t even look up; she just held one finger in the air, reached over to the edge of her desk, and then extended a couple papers in his direction. He took them from her, somewhat reluctantly, hoping that she would have been a bit more interested in his presence. 

Bellamy examined what she had handed him. The top one had Atom’s name listed as the author. The second one was a print out of a Wikipedia page titled “Charles Darwin.” He flipped between the two documents, and the problem was very clear. He could hear his own growls of disapproval even as he tried to stop them. 

Clarke still hadn’t looked at him. “The hilarious thing,” she started, “was that the prompt was actually to determine a recessive trait that they possessed and hypothesize why they had it.” Bellamy propped himself up against a nearby desk. “So not only did he plagiarize, but he didn’t even answer the question.”

“They’re idiots. All of them.” This was something he knew and understood deeply, yet it still astounded him how many ways kids could just make the same mistakes over and over again. 

Clarke finally looked up, and her mouth twitched into a subtle smile. “I promise you: I’m not trying to ruin your life.” She capped her pen, started straightening out the pile of papers in front of her. “I gave you John back, didn’t I?”

Despite himself, Bellamy felt the creases in his forehead straightening out and a reluctant grin creeping onto his face. “According to Murphy, he earned it.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “He’s doing better, that’s for sure, but I think that is truly a testament to finding someone who will actually be disappointed when you do poorly.” Papers were placed into a folder and tucked into a neat drawer in her desk. “However, I easily could have taken my time on grading those tests or emailing Cage with an update.”

“I am forever in your service, princess.” He walked around the desk and dammit if he didn’t want to lift Clarke up onto it and press his mouth onto hers. 

“Let this serve as a lesson though: don’t cross me or your players might start disappearing from the field, one by one.” It sounded like a threat, but her tone suggested it was more of a challenge. Bellamy took a step closer to her as she started writing up the next day’s agenda on the board. She kept her eyes steadfast on what she was writing, but Bellamy could see the gentle peek creeping up from her cardigan and coloring her neck. 

“Would that be my only punishment?” The line felt so immensely cheesy as he said it, but he hadn’t been able to stop it from rolling off his tongue. Clarke stiffened a bit next to him, and he wondered if he had just really taken it in the wrong direction. 

But then she turned to face him, marker in hand, just inches away from him. “Trust me, you don’t want to find out,” she responded. She leaned in closer, and Bellamy’s lips opened slightly in anticipation. But Clarke merely dotted him gently on the nose with her marker. “You really don’t.” 

She started gathering her bag onto her shoulder and then peered around Bellamy at the window. “Is it nice out there tonight?” 

Bellamy stuttered for a second and rubbed his nose, marveling at the way his index finger turned blue. “Yeah-- it’s decent.”

“Will I freeze in just a sweater?” Bellamy half hoped so, imagining the way that her nipples would pebble through her tshirt when faced with a brisk wind. He felt his jeans tighten and jammed his hands in his pocket. He was truly pathetic. 

“If you’re just walking to the parking lot, you’re probably good. If you’re walking all the way home, you may want a jacket.” She considered his answer and jammed a jacket into her bag and flicked the lights off. Bellamy felt his pupils widen and wondered how much of it was because of the sudden darkness and how much of it was because he was suddenly unfortunately aroused in a biology classroom. How fitting. 

“You heading out, or do you want to spend the night with the fish?” Clarke asked from the hall. Bellamy realized he had been thoughtlessly gazing at the fish tank and wondered how long he had been doing so. 

“No, no-- I’m coming.” He followed her out of the building, thankful that they were heading downstairs rather than up. But even the thought of his eyes being level with a view of her ass in her sensible teacher skirt was enough to slow his descent. 

When they got to the faculty parking lot, he found himself unintentionally following her all the way to her car. She threw the bag into the passenger seat and looked up at him through the open door, one hand on the steering wheel, one foot still on the ground outside of the car. “I am more than capable of getting myself home from here,” she said with a smile. 

Ugh, he was at a loss for words at that smile. His right hand rubbed the back of his neck in what he knew was a nervous gesture leftover from his teenage years. “Will I see you at the game tomorrow?”

Clarke gazed at him smugly. “I would never miss the return of John Murphy to the field.” She sat up slightly and licked her thumb. Bellamy paid far too much attention to the way her tongue slid gently over the pad of it. And then she rubbed it against his nose, taking off most of the blue and leaving him with what he knew had to be a hungry look in his eyes. “So I’ll be there. But I know football is everything here, so the better question is, will you see me?”

She gently pushed him off of her door, closed it, and started her car. After she buckled her seatbelt, she rolled down the window. “I’ll see you around, Bellamy.” 

Bellamy stepped back and watched as her car disappeared out of the lot before returning to his. He barely remembered his drive home, working on autopilot as his mind tried to think of anything but the biology teacher. He finally gave up on that hope when he got in the shower. He gripped himself tightly as he relived the way his name sounded from her lips.  _ Bellamy _ . And how that innocent gesture of rubbing his nose felt so perfectly filthy when that thumb belonged to her. 

Emerging from the shower, he felt better, but certainly not at peace. He hadn’t been so consumed with the thoughts of someone else in quite some time. 

“Dropship post-game?” He couldn’t help but send her the text. 

Clarke’s response came through only moments later. “If you win, you buy as repayment for Murphy.” He wondered if she had gone home thinking about him, but he doubted it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I went back and forth on whether or not it would be hot or just immensely awkward for them to fuck in Clarke's classroom. Because part of me that just lives in fantasy-land immediately thinks HOT but then the part of me that's a teacher thinks "Oh my god I could never you could lose your job and it would just be so awkward and that's my space for teaching," and since I'm a practical person, the teacher-side won out. 
> 
> Additionally, kids are SO STUPID when it comes to plagiarism. Like, I can immediately tell because it is so clearly much better than how they normally write. I don't even need an originality checker most of the time. I just immediately pick up on it. Especially because, as happens here, what they copy DOESN'T EVEN ANSWER THE QUESTION I ASKED. This is why I make my own questions rather than taking ones from the internet-- to make it harder for you to cheat! You spent more time trying to figure out how to make this online answer work for my assignment than just doing my assignment would! Anyway, rant over.


	11. Feel Your Fingers Keep Me Growing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which I am Clarke re: working out in the morning, and in which I am Raven re: drinking the swill of coffee at school. In which I am (hopefully yet unfortunately) both of them using their teacher tactics for other purposes.
> 
> (In which I base characters I dislike on people I don't like).

### Feel Your Fingers Keep Me Growing

Part of Clarke’s weird mind loved having after school plans because it meant she had to force herself out of bed and get her workout out of the way in the morning. Sure, she was up almost every morning, but she often enjoyed a leisurely cup of coffee, responded to emails, and caught up on late-work grading rather than actually getting her butt out of the door. 

Mornings were clearly her most productive hours, so she should use them to do the things she enjoyed less (i.e. parent communication), she reasoned. Running in the evening, even after a long day at school, was far more appealing than grading into the night. Still, there was something nice about having that part of her routine done and dusted before 7 AM. It always made her feel more alert-- far better than any coffee ever could. 

Plus, it gave her the added benefit of getting Raven to roll her eyes in the most spectacular way when they ran into each other in the faculty lounge and Clarke inevitably brought up how much better she felt when she worked out in the morning. 

“Sorry that not all of us are as perfect as you, Clarke,” Raven sarcastically said as she poured the remainder of the pot into a stained Tervis tumbler. She took a tentative sip, and then dumped it in the sink and started a new batch. “Why it is that no one here can figure out that a pot here needs exactly four scoops-- no more and no less-- is beyond my comprehension.” She grabbed a nearby sticky note and wrote “FOUR SCOOPS IDIOTS” with five exclamation points and signed it “Love, Raven” before slapping it on the machine. 

“Why you still drink the swill here despite your daily complaints rather than just making your own at home is beyond my comprehension.” Clarke smiled at her friend sweetly. 

Raven just stared back. “I hate that you’re a morning person. Especially when this is exacerbated by your runner’s high.” She examined the brown liquid as it dripped into the pot. “Don’t you normally just go for your run after school and then come straight to the game? I distinctly remember you spraying dry shampoo in your hair in the parking lot before the game against the Grounders.”

“Yeah, but 1. This game is away and 2. I have that plagiarism meeting after school, remember?”

Raven groaned on her friend’s behalf. “Blergh. That sounds like a pain.” She checked the lounge to confirm that they were alone. “It’s almost worth never worrying about plagiarism to avoid spending time with Cage.”

Raven wasn’t wrong on that front. Clarke had actually liked Cage Wallace when she had first interviewed for the job. He was a Nashville native like her, and they had actually both gone to the same summer camp up in Wisconsin. She had no doubts that these similarities had made her stand out in his mind and probably helped her get the job, so she tried her best to like him in return. However, upon starting at the Ark, she had realized that this was a harder task than it sounded. Thelonious-- their director-- was fine enough, but Cage had a tendency to talk longer than was ever necessary to convey a point. And he constantly assumed he had this great relationship with the kids when in reality, most of them did whatever they could to avoid his office. It wasn’t that he was mean, he was just... not as with it as he wanted to be. It was awkward. 

Clarke certainly was dreading this meeting, but she had an entire run to play out every potential outcome of it and construct perfect responses. 

“You sure you don’t want to just blow off the game and grab a drink after?” Raven asked her. 

“Nah, I feel obligated to see John return to the field after I evidently destroyed the team for two weeks there,” Clarke responded. 

Raven hummed as she lifted the pot from the machine and poured a quick cup, returning it with only a few drips sizzling against the heating plate below in the pot’s absence. “You sure that’s it?” she asked with a catlike grin. 

“Raven…” Clarke warned in the practiced warm and calm tone of a teacher chastising a student, “I told you we were not going to discuss such things at school. There are ears,” she waved her arms around her head, “everywhere!” 

Raven just took a long slurp of coffee, not breaking eye contact with Clarke the entire time. She smacked her lips and waited. 

Clarke knew what trick Raven was playing: it was the same one she used when she wanted a student to fess up to something. Just wait. They always spill. No one likes a silence. 

And dammit if it wasn’t effective. Of course, Raven already knew most of the story as frantic text messages from Clarke had poured in on Sunday after Bellamy departed her apartment. “Okay, fine! We might meet up after the game. And it would look shitty if I didn’t at least have a few comments on how they played.” 

Clarke couldn’t help but think back to the way he had hovered over her as she had written on her board the day before. She knew that when she walked into her classroom, she wasn’t going to be able to avoid imagining his warmth as she looked over at that agenda. As she picked up the marker and remembered how she had dotted his nose. 

It had felt so juvenile, yet she shivered at the thought of it. 

“Clarke.” Raven leveled with her. “If you wanted to pretend your goal was to ruin the football team here, you are doing a very poor job of it.” Clarke narrowed her eyes at her friend. “However, you’re not getting out of drinks with Jackson and me. So I hope you can find a way to make that work.”

“Chicks before dicks,” Clarke agreed and clanked her mug against Raven’s school coffee. 

“You know,” Raven mused, “I never genuinely thought we would get here. To this place where you could say that and it would really mean that we were truly friends rather than two people feigning friendship for the sake of revenge.”

Clarke chuckled and considered the strange path her life had taken to get her here. “Finn was worth something after all,” she reflected.

“I’m not sure I’d go that far. I’ll see you at lunch.” Raven grabbed her tumbler and papers and headed off to her room. 

*****

For a meeting with Cage, it really hadn’t gone that badly. She had been able to cut Cage off at essential moments that could have turned into long tales of his days as a classroom teacher, plus she had been able to pull documents explaining the assignment requirements. Her instructions and expectations were clear. Atom had mostly slunk in his chair, admitting to understanding how he knew what he had done was wrong. His mother had sat by his side and profusely apologized in that way that Clarke knew meant she still felt that onus of blame should fall on anyone but her son but there was nothing she could do about it. As a whole: not bad. 

The decision made by Cage was that Atom would receive a zero on this assignment (which was fine by Clarke and honestly wouldn’t even wreck Atom’s grade entirely) and that since this was his first warning, he would only have to spend a week off of the football team, so another three days of practice. 

Before she left the office, Clarke shot a quick text to Raven letting her know that they would still be able to carpool for the game and that she would be at her car in five. As she hoisted her bag onto her shoulder, she heard Cage remark, “One day they’ll all realize that there are things more important than football.”

Raven’s affirmative response came quickly, but she paused at the door, “Excuse me?”

“I know that the team brings in alumni support for this school, but at what cost? I think we’d be better off funneling their funding into other programs, don’t you?”

Clarke made a noise that neither agreed nor disagreed with his statement before heading down the hall to slip on jeans for the game, his words echoing in her head the whole way. 

I mean, sure, Clarke kind of agreed. She had heard that the musical costumes smelled of mothballs and were older than some of the actors’ parents, and she would LOVE some new beakers for her lab considering it felt like one was broken every time they did a lab. But that was not truly the fault of football, was it? Even Clarke had to admit that it was fun to head to these games on Friday nights. It was good to have something to rally behind.

Either way, it wasn’t likely that Cage Wallace was actually going to do anything about this opinion: removing football from Arkadia would be like removing a heart from a body. 

She pushed it to the back of her mind and instead checked her reflection in the mirror, making sure that her eyeliner had not become too smudged over the course of the day.

*****

Back in high school, Bellamy tried his best to pretend that it was all about the game. It wasn’t about the way that the girls or the teachers or his classmates looked at him after he clinched a particularly good play. It certainly wasn’t that when he was on the field, he could forget that he shared a bedroom with his sister in a small two-bedroom apartment with peeling walls and only one burner that worked. It had nothing to do with that he had just as much power-- often even more power-- than the kids who careened through the parking lots in shiny new cars when he put on that helmet. No-- he played for the pure enjoyment of the sport. 

And Bellamy did love the sport. But he lied to himself constantly, and he knew it. Football had been a constant in his life in Arkadia, and eventually, it had been his escape. It was tied to him in the same way that Octavia was. 

But now that he was supposedly an adult, Bellamy could admit that it felt good to get under those bright lights on a Friday night and hear the cheers from the crowd. Even now that he was not out playing, he imagined those lights and that noise fueling his soul in the same way that a plant photosynthesized. He just absorbed it into his system. 

And truth be told: he had a soft-spot for away games with this team. Arkadia traveled with a crowd, and it rattled the opponents to see their supporters dwarfed in their home stands. 

They also traveled with Murphy who was back like he had never left.

There were a few slip-ups, a key fumble, and an embarrassing sack that led to a tense huddle, but the defense was back to their old tricks. They held airtight, like Roman soldiers overlapping their shields. 

The other team never scored anything but field goals. 

Bellamy was very pleased with the evening. 

Of course, it didn’t hurt that he was even more interested than usual in heading to Dropship after the game. He would undoubtedly run into some of his old classmates who were shacked up with babies and working the car dealership lot with whom he would have to make small talk, but that was a small cost. 

Clarke had texted him a congrats at the end of the game, and he had looked up in the stands to see if he could catch a glimpse of her, but he never found her. On the bus home, she had texted again, warning him that she had to bring along some company to the bar. He found he didn’t mind. 

Bellamy knew he smelled ripe when he walked into the bar, and he tried to conceal his sweat-soaked hair with a baseball cap, but he certainly didn’t feel clean. He had debated running home and showering before heading back out, but he had wanted to get here sooner rather than later. Who knows if she would lose interest?

He found her in a booth near the door and swung in next to Eric Jackson across from Clarke with a beer in hand. “Nice game, Coach,” Reyes lifted her glass to him. 

He gave it a solid clank. “Thanks, but you know it was all thanks to a certain tightass teacher returning my player to me.” Clarke kicked him gently under the table and rolled her eyes.

“We’re all wondering when you’re going to make Clarke your assistant coach,” Jackson added in, and Clarke shot her friends a look of exasperation. 

Ah, so they all knew then. Raven and Eric started throwing football innuendos back and forth at each other, and Clarke mouthed “Sorry” at him. Once Jackson reached, “She could really round the bases,” Bellamy had no choice but to jump in.

“Hey now-- that one’s not even football; that’s baseball.” They all joined in at laughter, and soon the conversation flowed to more level topics-- the constant flow of emails from the school’s HR person, the evolving color of the leaves on the trees, and Raven’s evidently disappointing love life. She scooted her phone over to Jackson so he could see the idiocy of the male gender as evidenced by her conversations on Hinge. 

Bellamy was a self-declared introvert-- he regularly bemoaned the need to “go out for a drink” when he could instead do the same in the comfort of his own home for a significantly smaller price. Yet he found himself feeling energized by this conversation-- ending up in a spirited discussion about the merits and drawbacks of roommates with Jackson that really turned into Bellamy waxing poetic on how much he loved Miller. 

Before he knew it, his beer was drained and he was contemplating another just for the sake of continuing the evening. But everyone else was pulling sweatshirts over their heads, and Bellamy realized that he had barely even spoken to Clarke all evening. 

She caught him by the door, grabbing him gently by the elbow. “Hey. Sorry my friends are such meddlers.” She gestured to the duo walking to cars parked down the street.

“It was actually nice.” He found that he meant his response. “It’s not like I asked specifically only for you.” 

“Oh?” she said, raising her eyebrows at him, “You text a lot of different girls to meet you here tonight?”

“They’re actually waiting back at the bar-- you didn’t see them?” He thumbed at the door and pretended to head back inside. 

Clarke grabbed his arm a little tighter now and got up on her tippy-toes, softly bringing her lips to his. She was all warmth against him, and he could feel his lips begin to tingle as her peppermint chapstick was left behind on his lips. When she pulled back, her blue eyes reflected the lights of Dropship’s open sign. He wrapped his hand around the back of her neck, tangling his fingers into her hair. He could feel his cap pushing off of his head as they recollided, and she reached up and grabbed it off his head. He smiled, and his front teeth banged gently against hers as she responded to him with a smile of her own. 

They were interrupted by a horn as Raven drove by, but Clarke just flipped her a middle finger around Bellamy’s back. 

He looked down at her and gently tucked a wayward curl behind an ear. He suddenly felt like he was back in middle school and was not entirely sure what course to take. “So…” he cleared his throat. “I, um, don’t live far from here?” It came out as a question. Far from slick. When did he fall so out of practice? 

Clarke bit her lip, her eyes crinkling in amused contemplation. Bellamy let his hand drift from the back of her neck and down her arm where they came to rest on her hip. “Well, here’s the thing.” She took the baseball cap and positioned it back on his head, and he wasn’t sure if his mind was working in slow motion or if she was just moving slowly as a finger traced his ear as she settled back down. “This is going to sound totally lame, and I promise I am not just blowing you off, but I have a long run planned on the schedule for tomorrow,” she rambled on, her eyes drifting away from Bellamy’s face. 

He leaned back down into her eyesight. “Hey. Don’t worry about it. No offense taken.” 

Her shoulders relaxed down, and she looked back up at him. “I mean, if there are plenty of other girls waiting for you back in the bar, I wouldn’t want to keep you anyway.” 

“Yeah, I’ll get right back to them,” he said assuredly, but he pulled her in closer to him and kissed the corner of her mouth. 

“Alright then. Raincheck.” She pulled her keys out of her bag and started to walk to her car, Bellamy following with the tips of his fingertips lightly dancing against hers. 

“See you later, princess.” Though a rain check was promised, they did spend a few more minutes than necessary leaned against her car alternating between quick kisses and ones that went a bit deeper. 

Bellamy tried to fall asleep quickly that night. After all, he needed to go on a run in the morning. 

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Was that... a hint of plot I wrote??? Maybe???
> 
> Guys, I don't even know anymore. I used to think that writers who said that characters ran away with their stories were lying or at least exaggerating, but then I started writing this, and Raven just barged into this chapter demanding more screentime. This chapter was supposed to end differently, but then Clarke didn't want it to, so it didn't. 
> 
> Hoping to actually get started on my for real novel that I have been planning out soon here as well, so we will see if the same things happen there.


	12. There's Years of Hurt in Your Taillights

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry that I'm slowing down, but happy Easter everyone! School starts back up tomorrow, so I'm hoping that being on a more regular schedule will get me back on a more regular writing schedule. 
> 
> This chapter was much longer than I expected it to be. Also, I think I enjoy just writing slow quiet scenes. Adding in plot is my weakness. I've got ideas on where this is going, but I hope they actually come to fruition rather than just general fluffiness. At the same time, I am using this as my escape from the world, so who is going to fight me if it's all fluff. Also in the case of this chapter: EXPOSITION! Hopefully it doesn't feel to exposition-y.

### There's Years of Hurt in Your Taillights 

Bellamy slept soundly that night, which was a bit of a surprise, but too much of a relief for him to think about it too much. But that also meant he was awake early, as always, and staring at his ceiling wondering how long Clarke’s long run was exactly (was she training for something?), what time she started (now? Before the sun rose?), and where she went (did she always follow the same trail that he had seen her on a few weeks back?).

Mostly, he had one regret and one concern.

The regret: That he had been too distracted by her lips the night before to actually ask the girl about these details he was now pondering. (At the same time, it was truly not that much of a regret considering he had fallen asleep still thinking about those lips). 

The concern: That if he did go out for this run (only he knew that it was a part of a plan, so it wasn’t like he had anything to lose if he chose to just skip it) and he did actually run into Clarke (the chances of which were not quite as high as he would like now that he had started considering all of these potential issues) that he would make a fool of himself as a runner.

So he ran-- but was he a runner? He had never had a schedule set for him to run to. It was more of an occasional thing; something he did when he had to for training and then stuck with when Octavia poked him out of bed or if he didn’t feel like getting to the gym. 

All of these were considerations. 

But while he really had nothing to lose by staying in bed, he also really had nothing to gain either. So he pulled himself out from under the covers and padded into the kitchen to put on some coffee. As the caffeine warmed his hands and got his brain firing at a more acceptable number of cylinders, Bellamy came to the following conclusions:

  1. Clarke had woken up early a week ago, so he could guess for an earlier run.
  2. However, she also wanted coffee first thing, so probably a bit after actually waking up. He was going to guess an 8:00 AM start time. The weather was nice, and there was no heat to beat.
  3. She was newer in town, so his best bet was she would hit the trail at some point.



As for the distance? That mattered less. He wasn’t going to creepily assume that she would want him to join on his run. And he certainly wasn’t prepared for anything more than a few miles, and he wouldn’t embarrass himself by trying more than that.

“You look far too pensive for this early on a weekend.” Miller plodded into the kitchen and gestured at the coffee pot in question. Bellamy nodded in assent, and Miller poured himself a mug. “What’s on your mind?” He sat at the counter across from Bellamy, groggily sipping the brew. 

“Just deciding if I’m going to go out for a run or not.” Bellamy tried to keep his voice casual. 

“You guys won last night, right?” Bellamy nodded. “Sorry I missed this one.”

“Dude. The idea that you would come to a single high school football game nevertheless most of them is already far beyond the typical friend duty. I haven’t gone to a single insurance symposium or anything.”

Miller stared at him. “You have so little idea of how any office job works, don’t you.” Bellamy shrugged, really still thinking about whether or not Clarke would be wearing shorts in this weather or leggings. Both had their benefits. “Anyway, typically you only run on Saturday if O is here, if you lost and need to get the rage out of your system, or both. So what gives?”

“Hey, for all you know, I might be trying to pick up on a new habit here.” Bellamy wondered if he should wear shorts or leggings. How cold was it anyway? 

Miller let a judgemental “hmmm” hang in the air for a few seconds before continuing. “And this new habit would have nothing to do with the fact that you went out after the game without either me or O and that you did not make it to your bed last Saturday?” 

Bellamy was suddenly very absorbed in his coffee. “Well, I’m going to hit the road,” he said, ignoring his friend’s last question. He walked back into his bedroom, checked the weather on his phone, and pulled a pair of shorts out of a drawer. 

“Don’t you dare think this conversation is over, young man!” Miller demanded from the kitchen.

“Okay, mom,” Bellamy replied, but he was far more focused on checking his reflection in the mirror. Did this shirt make him look like he had a gut? 

Before he knew it, he was out the door, purposefully avoiding Miller’s pointed stares. It was just after 8, so he figured if nothing else, he could lope up and down the trail a couple of times and it would have been a productive morning. He clipped on his shuffle and started off at a steady pace-- probably slower than if Octavia were here this weekend. 

Though he had set out on this run with a specific purpose, he found himself falling deeper into his mind as the minutes passed. He ran through what the team needed to cover during each practice that week and started anticipating what plays to run at the next week’s game. He spent some time thinking about what to get Miller for his birthday in the next couple weeks. He remembered an email his former advisor had sent him earlier this week and that he had yet to respond to. This brought him back to his college days where he would spend his football warm-ups reciting Latin verb endings and noun endings to the beat of his footsteps. 

Without meaning to, Bellamy was suddenly reciting demonstrative pronouns in time with his footfalls.  _ Hic haec hoc, huius huius huius, huic huic huic _ , wave at a passing jogger,  _ hunc hanc hoc, hoc hac hoc _ . 

He eventually moved on to the general declensions and was shocked at how rusty he was with fourth declension-- there were just so many u-s-- and was absorbed enough by this reversion back to his college self that he almost missed Clarke running by in the opposite direction.

In fact, he basically did miss her. At first, Bellamy just returned the wave of the person going in the opposite direction of him and continued with his weird mantra, and it was only after he took a few more steps that his brain truly processed that she had just passed. That the reason he was out for a run was not to review Latin but instead to “accidentally” run into this girl and he had just missed her.

Bellamy quickly reversed course. 

It took a minute of picking up his pace, but soon he was close behind Clarke, watching her bobbing blond ponytail. She had made the same choice as him and was wearing shorts, and he wondered how he had ever thought that leggings would be preferable to seeing those long legs in all their glory. Clarke clearly felt his presence and looked over her shoulder, sending him a soft smirk. 

Bellamy bounded up a few steps closer until he was right along her side. She popped an earbud out and looked over, not slowing her pace a single second, “Hey.”

“Hey yourself,” he responded, hoping he didn’t sound as out of breath as he felt. “How many miles do we have left?”

Clarke looked down at her watch. “Just a mile and a half, so long as you’re willing to stick with this slowpoke.”

“So long as you’re willing to have me.”

“As a princess, I know to never turn down a bodyguard.” She smiled and put her earbud back in. 

The next mile or so minutes passed in companionable silence, but Bellamy did throw her a questioning look as they ran past her apartment. Clarke pulled out an earbud again.

“I almost always end my Saturday runs at the farmer’s market. You in?”

In response, he raised his eyebrows and picked up the pace. He could hear her laughter echoing behind him as she caught up. They ended at the gate to the farmers market panting slightly.

Bellamy looked at the gates that entered into the green where the local market was set up. The sign that noted “EBT accepted here” was in the exact same place he remembered it from his childhood. “Only place we can pretend to be middle class,” his mother had told him. He wondered if the stands were all still in the exact same places.

Clarke was strolling over to the water fountain just inside the entrance, and Bellamy jogged to catch up with her. After they had both taken a couple of gulps, she looked up at him, “You need anything here today?”

“No cash,” he responded, turning out his pockets. “Didn’t realize this was where I was going to be ending my run.”

Clarke smiled and looked around the market. “There is no better place to end a run than at the farmer’s market. I don’t do it every week, but they’re moving inside soon, so I want to take advantage of it while I can.” She elbowed him slightly, and he hoped that his sweat didn’t immediately soak her arm. “But if you need anything, just let me know. I’m sure we can work out a system of repayment.”

He liked the sound of that. 

They wandered through the market in a clear yet somewhat aimless pattern, doubling back for Clarke to compare carrots between stalls. Bellamy couldn’t help but smile as he watched the easy way she picked up conversations with the different vendors, asking them about specific traits of their crops and the best way to prepare them. Bellamy contented himself with sampling salsas and cheeses whenever he could. 

Bellamy didn’t recognize most of the vendors, either because the ones he had seen as a child were no longer there or because his memories from then were less focused on the faces and more on the colorful vegetables he had gingerly carried home as if they were the most precious things he had ever possessed. 

But then, he was stopped by a familiar voice. “Bellamy?” He caught sight of a woman almost obscured by the pile of bread on the table in front of her. “I almost didn’t recognize you!”

“Hey, Vera,” he responded as the woman came out from behind the table, ignoring the line of customers and wrapping him in a hug. When he used to frequent her table, he barely came up to her waist, but now he towered over her. Clarke caught his eye through the embrace, her mouth twisted up to one side. 

Vera barreled on, placing her hands on his shoulders and looking up at him. “Why don’t you ever come visit me? I don’t think I’ve seen you since the funeral!”

There was no need for her to explain which funeral that would be. For Bellamy, there was only one funeral that had mattered, that ever would matter. It hadn’t been large-- you don’t make many friends as the single mom of two children constantly working double shifts-- but Bellamy did have a vague recollection of fresh bread and dozens of cookies piled into his arms at some point. He assumed it was Vera, but he didn’t recall much from the entire day. In fact… 

“Vera: I’m so sorry. I don’t think I ever thanked you for everything you did then.” He felt embarrassed. How had he forgotten to tell this woman that he didn’t even realize how much that had meant at the time.

Vera just shrugged him off, and shushed a protesting customer as she reached into one of the boxes on the back table. “Hun, you never should have to thank someone for taking care of you when you need to be taken care of.” She pulled out an enormous cookie that Bellamy knew from experience was packed with popcorn and pretzels in addition to the usual chocolate chips. “I’m assuming your taste hasn’t changed much, but what about your friend?”

Bellamy looked back at Clarke, who was still sweaty but looking on at this entire exchange with bemusement. He decided to not even ask. “She’ll take the same.” 

Vera reached back for another cookie, and as she handed it to him, she warned him, “You can’t go that long between visits, you hear me? And tell O I say ‘hey’ and she better show her face around here soon too.” Bellamy nodded and gave a yes ma’am like the good Southern boy he was before turning back to Clarke.

She looked at the cookie. “Perfect post-run fuel,” she said, smiling and taking a bite. Bellamy found himself watching each movement of her face as she took in the taste profile of his childhood. They started walking toward the exit. “Old friend?” she asked.

“Something like that,” he responded, diving into his cookie himself. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was until he was chewing, and suddenly he was shoving the cookie into his face like he hadn’t eaten in years. As they walked out of the gate, he took one of the bags from her hands, knowing that this would mean she was stuck with him until she made it to her apartment. 

“I hate to pry, but…” Clarke trailed off, gauging his reaction. He gestured for her to go on. “She mentioned something about a funeral?” She winced slightly at her question.

Bellamy sighed and looked up at the sky, wishing for another cookie, but also wondering how far to go into this part of his life. It wasn’t like Clarke had signed up for a sob story at this very moment. He cracked his neck to the left side and then the right, as he figured that if he was going to have to talk about it, he might as well do it while they were walking. While she was not across from him giving him that sad look he was far too accustomed to seeing in people who understood his story. 

“Vera was good to O and me back in the day,” he started. This wasn’t really the beginning, but it felt the most logical place to start considering that Vera was who had brought this all up in the first place. “My mom used to take us to the market on Saturdays when she was off. Vera took pity on the boy who would stare at her cookies but never ask for one.”

“That boy was you?”

“That boy was me.”

“You must have been a good kid-- I know my mom stopped taking me to the store because I would beg so much.”

“I wasn’t good, I just knew which battles to fight. We couldn’t afford much, and EBT didn’t cover the bakery.” He felt her look over at him, but he didn’t dare peek to see how she had responded. “So one day when O was having a meltdown, Vera just plucked her out of my mom’s arms and started cooing at her. Once O calmed down, she told my mother that she would give me a cookie if I rolled all of her quarters for her and she could just come back when she was ready to go.

“So that’s how I spent my Saturday mornings there for a while. Other kids had sports practices or cartoons, and I had rolls of quarters and Vera’s cookies.” He took a deep breath in, not entirely sure how he was going to respond to the next part. Most of the time, he was okay with it now.

“My mom died four years ago. That was probably the last time I saw Vera. Even after I stopped showing up on Saturdays, after I had left for college and my mom stopped heading to the markets on Saturdays, she still remembered us and showed up.” Bellamy realized now how little he and Octavia had given her in return. He wasn’t even entirely sure he knew her last name. 

He dared a look over at Clarke. The look on her face dared that he hold her gaze, to look away would be to admit how much all of this had changed his life. Clarke wasn’t crying, her eyes weren’t even filled with tears, but Bellamy noted some tension between her brows that he had never seen before. He wanted to hug her, unexpectedly. Typically when he talked about this time, he wanted to be left alone, not touched. 

“I can’t even try to understand,” was all she said. 

“You have your own things.” He gently hip-checked her. “We all have our own things.”

“Yeah, but your sister couldn’t have been that old when all this happened.  _ You _ couldn’t have been that old. You were my age! I’ve had to deal with my mom’s shit, but that’s completely different.” He noticed that she didn’t mention death once when talking about it. 

“O was in high school. Sophomore,” he conceded. 

“What did you guys do?” In all of his experience about talking about his mother’s death, Bellamy had realized that there were two paths the conversation could take. The first was to ask questions about how his mother died, which were never pleasant. The second was to ask about what he was going to do. When he had first called Miller after it all happened, the first thing Miller did was make sure that he had a plan for himself-- not what the last thing he said to his mother was (Bellamy couldn’t say precisely what it was, to be honest, but he hoped it was that he loved her) or who found the body (Octavia, in a moment in her life that he wished he could have taken for her)-- but how Miller could help Bellamy move forward in his life. And that was the moment Bellamy knew he could trust his now-roommate forever.

The urge for physical contact was too strong now. Bellamy swung an arm over Clarke’s shoulder, no longer really caring how badly he smelled after their morning sweat. He knew it was not as good as she smelled; he could still catch notes of her shampoo even after a run. “We managed. O was a minor, so I moved home and became her guardian. Luckily, they needed an assistant coach for the team at school, and a year later, Coach Mayweather retired, and I got the gig. Octavia graduates, gets a full ride to Vanderbilt, and we are a happy Blake family.” He gave a big smile at the closing of his speech. Clarke frowned a bit at it. 

“Where were you? You know, before all this?” 

“Knoxville at UT.” 

Clarke started to say something but paused mid-word, clearly puzzling something out in her head. “You were… were you… still in college?” She looked up at him, and honestly, while Bellamy found most of her faces got his blood moving in ways he never could have imagined, the look of confusion was purely endearing. 

He chuckled. “Nah, I was helping with the team when I could and working on my Ph.D.”

“Oh so we’re a big smart boy over here, aren’t we?” She brought a hand up to poke him on the forehead but ended up whacking herself in the face with a bag full of zucchinis. 

He laughed and took the bag from her hands. “Well, I was studying Classics which is not really the most employable subject, especially when you’re only halfway through, so you tell me how smart I really am here.”

Clarke shrugged in response. “Might be more employable than only a year of med school.” 

They were at the steps to her apartment, and Bellamy loathed to remove his arm from her shoulder. “You probably need help carrying these up, don’t you?” he asked, gesturing to the bags. “Wouldn’t want you to give yourself a vegetable-induced concussion.”

“Well, lucky for me, I can imagine a football coach would be pretty familiar with concussion protocols.” She slid out from under his arm but only for a moment to open the door. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this version, Vera has no relation to Marcus (if he ever decides to make an appearance... TBD). I just wanted a warm motherly character here, and it's a great name.


	13. Calls to You Like the Wild Geese

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Breaking from my Yoke Lore lyric chapter titles to one from "Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver. You'll see why...

### Calls to You Like the Wild Geese

Clarke still felt a memory of where Bellamy’s arm was draped over her shoulder as they separated to walk up the stairs. Typically, she feels gross after she runs, salty sweat solidifying her hair and seasoning everything that passes between her lips. Normally, she wouldn’t want anyone to touch her during those moments-- she dreads even feeling her own body. Yet she wanted that contact back-- to feel his sweat intermingling with her own again.

It doesn’t help that she swears she can feel him practically crackling with tension behind her. Perhaps that was not entirely sweat she smelled, but some potent mix of it with pheromones.

Does talking about your not-really-childhood trauma do that for some strange reason?

Whatever combination it was, she didn’t have to wait long for it to play a role. With barely a single heartbeat passing after her door was opened, Bellamy had already slid the bags of produce on the counter (a stray potato making an escape and rolling to the floor) and his hands were in her hair and his mouth was on hers: hot, salty, sweet. 

They pushed back up against the wall, and her hands roamed underneath his shirt and down his back as his tongue slid upwards inside her teeth. He migrated, leaving a soft trail of kisses as he moved down the slope of her neck. 

Bellamy caught her eye. “You’re salty,” he observed.

She took his lower lip between her teeth and let them gently scrape the soft interior. “And you stink.” And with that, she nudged away from him, a new destination in mind. She pulled off her quarter-zip and let it fall to the floor. Stepping on the back of each heel, her shoes were removed and left where they stood. She stood on each leg to extract her feet from each sweaty sock, looking at him over her shoulder in a challenge. “You coming?”

Bellamy quickly bent down to untie his shoes, tripping slightly as he stood up while Clarke pulled her tshirt over her head. He caught her at the door to the bathroom. “So many layers,” he commented, pulling her in for another kiss and sliding his broad palms into the back of her shorts. 

Clarke grabbed at his shirt and pulled it over his head, using it as an opportunity to reach over and turn on the shower. Bellamy caught her from behind, wrapping his arms around her waist momentarily before letting one hand drift downward and sneak into the front of her shorts while the other moved upwards and fought with the elastic of her sports bra. She widened her stance slightly to give him better access between her legs and tried to pull the bra off. His fingers started fluttering up her thighs, and he was rolling a nipple between a thumb and forefinger when she nearly fell over trying to free the tight material from her ponytail. 

He laughed. “Maybe we should just get in,” he said, untangling the sports bra from where it was caught on a stray bobby pin. 

Clarke opened the door of the shower, only to turn around and jog back into her bedroom, holding one tit in each hand to keep them under control-- the pesky little buggers. This is why sports bras were essential. This is why they were so constraining. She returned with a condom and got into the shower, pulling Bellamy in behind her.

There was no denying it: dicks were weird. There might be (must be for all the hype they get) be girls (and guys) out there who genuinely consider them attractive and good to look at, but Clarke had never met one. Or if she had met one, she had not engaged them in conversation on this topic. That wasn’t to say that she didn’t appreciate dicks-- in fact, Clarke found that genitals in just about every form had good use-- but even when sucking a guy off, she had never spent much time thinking about the particular attributes that made an individual dick different from any other one. 

However, there is always something to find pleasant about a naked man. It doesn’t hurt when he had clearly delineated abdominal muscles and a smattering of freckles across wide shoulders. It was really a miracle that he fit in her shower whatsoever. 

And that when he smiled at her, water falling into his hair and racing down each tendril of a curl before dripping onto her, she could feel her body warming from something more than the hot water. 

Clarke could feel herself grinning stupidly back at him, but before she could get him back into a kiss, he grabbed the shampoo from the shelf on the side and started massaging it into her hair. 

“You know what this reminds me of?” she asked as soon as the thought passed through her head. 

Bellamy tilted her neck up and kissed her wetly, water flowing between their faces. She snorted slightly, and they separated smiling. “What does this remind you of, Princess?” 

“That scene in  _ Out of Africa _ .” Clarke paused. This wasn’t exactly the most common reference to be throwing out there at the beginning of a hook up. But she was also coming to a quick understanding of why this scene worked so well when it took place in something other than a shower-- no flowing water to really worry about. 

“Are you saying you’re Meryl Streep here?”

“No, I just ended up with a Robert Redford in my shower.” 

“If there are any celebrities that I have been mistaken for, I am pretty sure Redford is fairly low on the list.”

“You’ve seen it though?” His fingers had combed through her hair and he had moved to shampooing his own. She grabbed the conditioner and started working some through her hair. 

“By the time O was 5 and I was in my teens, older movies were kind of the balance between reasonably appropriate, interesting, and cheap. I’ve seen a lot of them.” He leaned over her to rinse out his hair. Clarke marveled at the way that his torso served as a shield over her, blocking the shower’s stream. And though she still didn’t necessarily think it pretty, she reached down and wrapped a hand around his cock.

Bellamy moaned ever so slightly and braced one hand against the shower wall while the other traced swirling circles at her waist. “Should I be reciting "The Ancient Mariner" for you then?” he asked through slightly strained breaths. 

Clarke tightened her grip and started gliding her hand along the wet length. “Not a huge Coleridge fan to be honest.”

“Fine then. Dealer’s choice.” He kissed her quickly and then started reciting. “You do not have to be good.” An intake of breath as he braced himself more securely, the circles at her waist becoming less precise. “You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.” She began to plant kisses along his chest, wondering how far into this he would get. “You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” He looked her straight into the eyes, and her hand floated upward to cup his cheek, the other continuing on its task. “Tell me about despair… Oh, fuck it.”

At this point, he gave up on this endeavor and reached out of the shower to grab the condom from where she had left it. He slid it on with slippery hands and moved towards her. Clarke was no longer able to tell if she was wet from the water that ran between her legs or from the voice of the man who had been mumbling poetry into her ear moments before. He pushed into her.

Shower sex is never as easy as it sounds, and Clarke was suddenly grateful that her shower had a glass door rather than a mere curtain rod. All the better for stability. Once they found a position that seemed acceptably sturdy, Clarke nipped his ear and said, “You were saying?”

“Dammit, girl,” he growled back, fitting his forearm at her back and bringing him right up to his chest. “Where did I leave off?”

“Something about despair, I believe,” she smirked back at him.

Whether or not he meant to, his tempo settled into the cadence of his voice. “Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on.” A pause. A deep kiss. “Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees.” A slight grunt-- from her or from him is really anyone’s guess. “The mountains and the rivers.”

Bellamy’s voice paused but his body kept moving, inside her, up against her, all around her. He moved his hands down to get a firm grasp on her ass. “Fuck, Clarke, you feel so good.”

“Is that the next line?” she asked, though she doubted she could recite what he had said back to him or even tell him her middle name at this moment. Her eyes were already starting to roll upward and drift shut, her leg getting shaky where she had propped it up. 

“You know it isn’t, but, you know, Princess, I am a little bit preoccupied at the moment.” His tempo was picking up now, and Clarke bit into the muscle of his shoulder as she felt her orgasm wash over her. 

Still out of breath, she responded, “I might be able to relate.” And as if he were waiting for her permission, he released. His breath was ragged as he rested his forehead against hers, still pulsing inside. Clarke jerked forward and took his lower lip between smiling teeth. 

Eventually, they unhinged themselves from each other and stood back. “The water feels colder now,” Clarke commented. “Not sure if it is actually colder or if it just feels that way after, well, that.”

“Either way, it probably means we should be getting out.” Her stomach took that opportunity to growl, and he chuckled. “That’s probably another sign.” Bellamy brushed some of her wet hair behind her ears and wrapped her in for a kiss as he reached behind her to turn the water off. 

Clarke stepped out to grab her towel from where it hung and took another couple steps to snag another which she threw back to him. Bellamy glanced at her wrist. “Miller probably thinks I’m out there dead somewhere.”

“Just another murdered jogger statistic,” she mused as she wrapped her hair up. She surveyed the trail of clothes that led from the door to the shower. “We might have another issue though.” 

“What’s that?” He kissed her again, and it most certainly was distracting when he did that. Especially when there were only sheets of terry cloth between them, even if she wasn’t quite sure her legs could hold her up for another second after that invigorating morning of running and fucking. 

“Well, it really depends on how chill you feel about some things, but the issue here is your clothes.” She pointed to where his shorts were discarded at the edge of the shower, visibly wet. If she were him, she wouldn’t want to put dirty running clothes back on anyway. 

“Oh. You’re right.” Bellamy bit his lip in a brainstorm. 

Clarke wandered over to her closet, pulling on a pair of leggings as she went. “I mean, you can probably make this work.” She tossed him an oversized Vanderbilt sweatshirt which he evaluated and then shrugged on. Now he stood there in her sweatshirt and a towel, and even though clothes had been added, she could imagine his sculpted pectorals brushing against the inside of her sweatshirt, and it was mildly distracting. She grabbed a sweatshirt for herself, not even bothering with a bra, and threw it on. 

She moved over to a drawer. “And I think I have something in here that could work, but I’ll definitely need them back.” Clarke found the worn grey sweatpants exactly where they always were-- tucked over to the left side. She threw those at him before she could change her mind.

He looked at them dubiously. “And to whom exactly do these belong? Sorry, but there is no way these fit you, so is there some angry boyfriend I should worry about finding me in a dark alley?” To be honest, this was probably something they had discussed beforehand. Did he have a girlfriend who was going to track her down? It wouldn’t be the first time that she had dealt with that situation… 

“No, those were my dad’s.” It felt a bit strange to hand off one of her dad’s belongings to this guy she was hooking up with, but for some reason, she trusted that he wouldn’t just never return them. “He died when I was a kid. So I’d like them back, if you don’t mind.”

“You sure you don’t mind me borrowing them?”

Clarke looked over at him, his dark eyes blown wide with concern. She found her response was genuine, “No, really. You’re good. It's been a while, I have plenty more of him, and there's nothing really unresolved there anymore. But I do still like having the parts of him that I have.” 

Bellamy stepped into them and walked across the room, taking her in his arms. “I’ll return them as quick as I can.” 

They stood there for a moment in that embrace. Clarke smoothed her hand down the back of his sweatshirt, or rather, her sweatshirt on him. “You know,” she said into his chest before looking up, “it’s a bit weird with you wearing my dad’s pants, but you look pretty damn good in my sweatshirt. I see why guys find girls wearing their clothes to be hot.”

He laughed. “You know,” he planted his hands against her hips, “if those high school guys knew you walked around wearing that Ark sweatshirt with nothing underneath it, they’d never learn anything.”

She looked down to see that she had indeed grabbed her Ark sweatshirt from her stock and narrowed her eyes at him, “Or maybe that would just be one football coach who wouldn’t be able to concentrate.”

They kissed through laughter, until Bellamy decided that he really did need to get home before Miller started scouting the trails and Clarke’s stomach wouldn’t shut up. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you haven't seen Out of Africa, 1. You should because it is great, and 2. here is the scene I am referencing, which my friends and I decided is one of the sexiest-non-sex-scenes ever filmed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8sDpSZeDBE
> 
> Also a note to all you boys: Reciting Mary Oliver-- especially memorized-- is a great way to get in a girl's pants. I know it almost seems too unrealistic, but I'm basing that off of a real experience I had. (wink, wink).


	14. I Got the Words for the Feelings that Were Stuck in Your Chest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry that this took so long! I'm actually going to be moving in about a month, so this last week has been filled with me trying to figure out some of those details.

### I've Got the Words for the Feelings That Were Stuck in Your Chest

Time passed in a blur of sneaky glances, late night conversations, and a constantly active text thread. Bellamy was pretty sure he hadn’t texted this much since college, if ever. 

They hadn’t talked about this easy transition, which Bellamy knew was completely irresponsible, but it was too lazily satisfying to live in the reality he currently inhabited. 

He picked up quickly on the fact that Clarke was a creature of habit. As much as she pretended to be spontaneous, there was a pattern to everything she did. 

He started to think about his weeks as starting on Saturdays. 

If she hadn’t stayed at his the night before, on Saturday mornings, Bellamy would catch her at the back half of her run. He would say hi to Vera again at the market before returning to her apartment for breakfast, maybe a mid-morning nap, maybe a shower together, maybe just a few episodes of a brainless cooking show or sitcom. 

If they didn’t meet up in the morning (and almost always when they did anyway), she would text him after her run, and they would find plans for the evening. They returned to Dropship multiple times, played more board games-- both with and without their friends, or sometimes just ordered Thai from the one Thai place in town before making out on her couch. She always complained that his tongue was too spicy.

There were a few Saturdays where he spent most of his time at Clarke’s, only dashing home to grab a set of clean clothes after the run. 

That was the most consistent part of the week. Saturdays were his reset. The rest, he realized, she wanted him to think was on a whim, and the pattern varied slightly, but it was really all the same.

Bellamy had been thankful for what was far from the first time for Miller’s salary and cleanliness when Clarke essentially invited herself over not long after their first run together. She toted a six-pack of IPAs, which Miller mumbled at, but she promised that the next time she showed up, she’d bring a pilsner as well, and he seemed content with the arrangement. 

Bellamy was even more grateful that Clarke immediately looked like she belonged in the place he settled into over the past four years. Though he and Miller had unintentionally let her choose where to sit before either of them sat down, she somehow gravitated to the corner of the couch that was almost always empty unless O was in town and decided to sprawl out from the middle cushion. She had gently tucked her feet underneath her and joined in on the roommates’ conversation as if she had been there the whole time. 

Clarke came over to his place once or twice a week. Each time, she tried to make it seem like something she had no plans of doing until that moment, but Bellamy had quietly started making bets with himself on Sunday for which days it would be. Monday was almost never. It would be too weird both leaving Tuesday morning for faculty meetings. Tuesday was almost always, unless she had given a test. Thursdays if the game was away, Fridays if the game was home. 

His place, they immediately agreed, was better for weeknights given Bellamy’s even earlier rise time than hers and how its location allowed you to avoid what Arkadia called rush hour but was more like a minor inconvenience.

The first time she had floated the idea of coming over, Bellamy had made an emergency stop at the grocery store and pulled out all of the stops (or as many stops as he could pull with limited notice). He had managed to pull together a decent tray of enchiladas, which he was able to pull out of the oven, bubbling and sizzling, just minutes after she walked through the door. 

Since Clarke that first invitation over, her indications that she was going to swing by drifted quickly away from long meandering explanations of why it made more sense for her to be at his place to merely, “Tonight cool?” He had yet to say it was not cool. Sometimes he worked back through the limited dishes he knew how to make, sometimes they poured bowls of cereal. 

When Bellamy was stuck at home with only Miller, he did his best to try to avoid texting Clarke every thirty seconds to give his input on the show or the game or what he had had for dinner. His best was not very good. He had yet to invite himself over to her place on a weeknight, but there were moments he came very close to doing so. Moments where he wondered what she was doing alone in her bed. Wondered if she took showers late in the evening with thoughts of him pulsing through her veins until she would reach down and stroke herself gently until getting rougher and barely being able to stifle her cries. 

Or maybe that was just something he had to do when he thought of her. Maybe it wasn’t reciprocal. 

And like, yeah, the sex was good. But Bellamy was no stranger to good sex. In fact, he was well-acquainted with the concept. He might even argue that he had had sex that was better, wilder, than the sex he had with Clarke. Even if that was true though, he had never had sex that had felt so positively addictive, that was so driven by the person it was with. 

“It’s like, more than the sex,” he had explained to Miller with a football game playing in the background one night, “It’s all that comes before and after it, you know?”

Miller patted him somewhat mournfully on the back, eyes wide with false concern, “You’re starting to get feelings, dude.”

“I’m not sure about that; I’m just pretty sure this is what happens when you get to your late twenties. You realize you can’t just engage entirely in one-night stands, even if nothing is entirely long-term.”

“Sure, Jan,” Miller responded. “Anyway, you should definitely keep that girl around. She’s cool.”

“Who are you now: Octavia trying to find a new mom?” Miller snorted at that. “You just like that you’ve been able to reap the benefits of the leftover meals.”

“That certainly doesn’t hurt.” He took a sip of his beer and cleared his throat. “But I mean it. She’s cool. She’s still here in the morning sometimes in the morning and isn’t super awkward; she actually seems interested in what I do rather than making fun of it. Plus she makes enough coffee for me.”

“Well, that’s just a sign she’s a liar then, because anyone who seems genuinely interested in insurance sales is clearly acting.” 

Miller sighed. “There are worse things to be. Like maybe a high school football coach?”

“Ooh, good comeback-- really got me there.” 

“But also Bell, you seem less on edge. You’ve been talking about the season about 50% less than you have any other season.”

“Probably just because we don’t look that great this year, and the more I talk about it, the more I have to come to terms with that fact.”

“If that’s what you want to tell yourself. But I’ve been telling you for years: You need to get more hobbies. O isn’t around anymore for you to scold when she was out past curfew-- not like that was a particularly good hobby anyway-- so if your new hobby of fucking Clarke Griffin gets you something slightly new to be fixated on, I’m all about it.” 

“Maybe I’ll pick up on knitting instead.”

“Octavia, by the way,” Miller added in, gesticulating wildly now, “also notices this change-- even from dozens of miles away. She’s all, ‘This is getting serious, right? He hasn’t been texting me as much.’”

“She is just happy I’m no longer obsessively checking Vanderbilt’s grade portal.” 

Miller leaned back with a cat’s grin. “Whatever you have to tell yourself to sleep through the night.”

And maybe Miller was right. Clarke was kind of his new hobby, another activity to add to his weekly schedule. Hobbies, however, were something you did and focused on while you were in the moment, but then moved on from. You didn’t spend all day thinking about knitting. 

Then again, what did Bellamy really know about what the traits of hobbies were. He couldn’t recall ever having one. 

Indeed, Bellamy was spending a significantly smaller quantity of time prepping for practices, but he had chalked that up to a few years under his belt since no one seemed to be really suffering from the decrease in focus. They moved into championship season, easily beating the teams they expected to beat, and eking out victories in their closer games as well. They were performing, well, better than he expected them to. 

“You alright there, Coach?” Murphy sidled up next to him during the second quarter of one of those games as the offence took the field. 

“We’re doing just fine out there, Murph. And you look good. I think you can get a sack in before the end of this game.” Bellamy looked out at the field and jotted down a few notes. 

“Yeah, so why aren’t you, like, doing your typical coach thing?” Murphy did an uncanny imitation of Bellamy’s typical habit of pacing and screwing his face into weird shapes. “What’s with this new zen coach?”

Bellamy smacked his clipboard against his shoulder pads. “You want me to be meaner?”

“Nah nah nah,” Murphy responded, backing up with hands raised in submission, “Just wondering who we have to thank for giving you some other place to release all that tension.” He transitioned into some sort of salsa from what Bellamy could tell, with enough hip-thrusting in it to make Bellamy bring his typical edge back into his voice. Zen coach no more. 

“Murphy. Inappropriate. Take a seat.”

Murphy tiptoed backwards to the bench, but leaned over to Bellamy as he did so, “You know, Ms. Griffin’s been much nicer to me lately.”

Bellamy shot him a glare, but found enough composure to give a neutral comeback. “Funny how that happens when you actually do your work, huh?”

Murphy’s hands went back up and they stayed there until his ass was firmly on the metal bench. In watching his retreat, Bellamy chanced a glance up to the stands, knowing exactly where Clarke would be sitting. He didn’t think they quite caught eyes, but he did note with a tinge of uneasiness that it did settle a sort of calm over him. Did he need to get rid of zen coach? Was he really that zen?

Murphy was, unfortunately, smirking at him and clearly tracing his gaze as he brought his eyes back down. He kept them firmly on the field for the rest of the game.

He relayed this story to Clarke as they ate spoonfuls of cookie dough ice cream out of a quickly melting container after that evening’s victory.

Clarke didn’t seem surprised. “Yeah, Raven told me that we basically have two options, but I have a feeling I know which way you are going to go on it.”

“Please illuminate me.”

“One,” she said, using her spoon to represent the number, “We become one of those teacher couples who just lay it all out there and keep no secrets and get engaged in approximately, hmmm...” She looked at her watch as if that would help, “... four months. Married six months after. Can’t let those kids think we’re having premarital sex now. Students will be invited to the wedding.”

He managed to not spit his ice cream back into the carton and forced out, “And option two?”

“We stay incognito. Which is kind of where we are and where I would like to be and where I assume you would like to be as well. Just means we can really never dine at any establishment where anyone under the age of twenty one can enter or see a movie or drive through a fast food line together. We’re probably pushing it with the farmer’s market. Those kids, they have eyes everywhere.”

“This is a small town,” he assented.

“And they are already starting to guess. Your example with Murphy was one. And I’ve heard a few more than usual conversations go quiet when I walk by tables at lunch.”

Bellamy considered those options. Neither was ideal. But he knew Clarke was right. Teenagers could turn into Scooby gang meddling kids when presented with potential sources of drama. They got far too invested in each others’ lives and when you combine that with a mostly dichotomous understanding of the world, high tension was unavoidable. Teenagers either hated each other, were indifferent to each other, or in undying, passionate love. Dating someone in your mid-twenties was hard enough to decipher for him, and he was living in it. It would be impossible from the outside.

He watched as she took a spoonful of frothy liquid, carefully balancing it to avoid spilling a single drop on its journey from the container to her mouth. “So do we quash the rumors?”

Clarke shook her head emphatically. “Denial is an admission of guilt to these creatures. You just smile and move on. It sounds like you handled it perfectly this evening.” 

“So, we’re cool? I don’t have to save up for a ring or anything?”

“We’re cool,” she nodded. “With a few weeks of no new change, they will forget and move on. As long as you don’t break up with me and I don’t key your car in the faculty parking lot or vice versa or something, we’re good.” She focused herself back on the ice cream. 

The thought made Bellamy a little queasy. While he had dated while coaching before, it was never anyone tied to the school. Were there rules about this in the faculty handbook? He thought back to the beginning of this, that moment he first leaned in to kiss her and thought he would barely have to see her again if this all went south. He didn’t want it to go south, and if it did, he realized he was far too naive and caught up with her lips at that time to really think things through. The whole school would hate him if he broke up with her and they knew. She was far more valuable than he was. One of his assistant coaches could probably replace him in a heartbeat. 

Part of him wanted to tell Clarke that she was wrong, that he would prefer the first option, that he would survive the deluge of questions from the students. That all of that would be worth it if it meant that she could lean over the railing from the stands and give him a kiss after a victorious game. That he could wait outside of her car as she wrapped up tutoring. He was never someone who engaged in much PDA, but he didn’t like the idea that he wouldn’t even have the option. 

No. The second option was the only logical one. 

“Hello? Earth to Bellamy?” he smacked back into reality, grounding himself in her blue eyes. “You alright there?”

“Yeah, fine,” he ran a hand through his curls as if that would somehow push that second stream of thoughts to the back of his head. “Should we write up a contract then?” 

He loved the moments when he clearly caught Clarke off guard with his comments. Her eyes would briefly dart up before narrowing at him with her lips starting to twitch up to the right. “I don’t think that will be necessary.”

“Well, that’s a bummer, because I’m sure I could find a way to sneak in all sorts of fun contractual obligations.”

“Oh yeah? Like what?” She tilted her chin up at him. 

“Oh, I could get creative,” he responded, wrapping his hands underneath her ponytail and drawing her in for a long kiss. The sugar from the ice cream danced on both of their lips and his other hand dipped to her hip to pull her in closer. 

A clearing of a throat interrupted them from the living room, and they extracted themselves from each other. “Public spaces!” Miller reminded them. 

Bellamy leaned his forehead against hers. “Have your people call my people, and we will make sure this contract is mutually beneficial.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have never (thank god) dated a fellow teacher; HOWEVER, with one of my earlier coaching gigs, the kids definitely shipped me with one of my coworkers which was awkward but also we actually did date, so... they were right? But students can dig way deep into your personal life and will never stop, so you either have to tell them the whole truth or none of the truth.


	15. I'm Close to Making It a Song

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SORRY for the long wait. I hit a bit of a block on how exactly I wanted things to unfold, plus my moving process is now in full swing and it's fairly emotionally exhausting. I was doing quite well at the beginning of this social isolation, but now I am definitely suffering. Motivation is low.
> 
> And then last night, I literally couldn't focus on my book because I was starting to write this chapter in my head. So I pulled out my phone and typed away. It's probably less polished than usual. 
> 
> Enjoy! Hopefully the next chapter is quicker.

### I'm Close to Making It A Song

One thing that Clarke has not been prepared for when she became a teacher: the onslaught of daily emails. 

For the first few weeks, she had found her constantly refilling inbox to be some sort of delight— something that felt productive to check while rarely taking much mental or emotional energy. It was satisfying to move things between folders, and looking at her streamlined inbox set her mind at ease. Raven assured her that the joy would not last. 

As usual, Raven was correct. 

It was only November, but Clarke had already given up on the coding system she had once found so appealing. In fact, she had become the type of person she never thought she would become: someone who had unread emails in her inbox. Ones that she would ignore and never open or move to the trash. She gave up on keeping her phone screen clean of red bubbles. 

You just had to decide where to focus your energy. 

Besides, she figured, back when she kept her digital life so streamlined, she was bored and new in town. She had nothing better to do than click through the oddly personal emails from the art teacher or check to see what furniture the choir director was trying to sell off. But now, she had friends. Hell, it even appeared she had a relationship. 

Honestly, that part was nice. Clarke hadn’t really acknowledged how lonely she was when she first moved to Arkadia— she had done a bang-up job of keeping herself busy. So it was truly nice to have someone who she could see a few times a week, someone who kept the quiet from getting too loud. 

But that wasn’t the only thing keeping her from organizing her inbox. After all, when she had first decided to move, Clarke had still had her reservations on how her friendship with Raven was really going to turn out, since most of the communication beforehand was relegated to text messages. On the surface, the only things the two girls really shared was an attraction to the same asshole (since dumped, good riddance) and an interest in science (and even that was different disciplines— something that most people struggled to understand could actually mean they were different). But as it turns out, that was enough to make Clarke feel as grounded in a place as she had felt, well, maybe ever. 

That being said, even with the semblance of a social life starting to form, Clarke wasn’t a total email heathen. She still scanned through her emails daily and made sure to open those that seemed important and set reminders to respond to the ones that required her feedback. 

One thing stayed the same though: Clarke was still a sucker for surveys. Sometimes she thought she should try to make a career out of taking them— she was pretty sure that there were people out there who actually made a living that way. There was just something so satisfying about filling in those bubbles with just the click of a button. 

“What’s this one about then?” Bellamy peered over her shoulder one night to catch her on another survey. 

“School lunches.”

He tried to put his face in between hers and the screen, but she maneuvered herself around him. Nothing kept her from a survey. “Do you even eat the school lunches?” he asked. 

“Mmmm… I think I got a grilled cheese once.”

“So you’ve got important feedback that student council is absolutely RELYING on here, hmmm?”

“Actually, I think that this one comes from someone in the AP stats class,” she responded, finishing up the last response and preparing to hit submit. 

“Well, in that case, I am so pleased to see my Alma mater teaching what I am sure is pristine data collection techniques.”

“I do hope they discuss response bias at least,” Clarke mused, but she was cut off by a kiss and a challenge to see how long she could talk about data collection. 

As it turns out, Clarke was knowledgeable enough about statistical analysis to continue spouting facts even as he pulled her on top of him and did not stop until he placed his thumb on her clit and thrust up inside of her. That shut her up for a while at least.

Other emails Clarke didn’t ignore? Ones from Thelonious Jaha or Cage Wallace. Though the former were regularly long-winded and the latter were tinged with condescension, she figured it was a bad move to not at least read the emails your supervisors sent you.

So when she got an email from Wallace asking if she could come to a meeting in his office after school, she first asked Raven at lunch if she had received a similar invitation. 

“Nah, but let me see the email first.” The brunette snatched the phone out of Clarke’s hands without waiting for permission and examined the message. “And this one isn’t another one of those spam ones from what I can tell.”

There had already been two phishing issues at the Ark in just the first few months of the year. Both times, they had resulted in the bulk of the faculty getting emails from what appeared to be a member of the administration requesting a meeting. 

(Clarke had her suspicions that the art teacher was responsible for starting it, but Raven was hedging her bets on the elderly but popular history teacher). 

“So am I getting fired?” Clarke tried to not let a squeak of anxiety worm it’s way into her tone. 

Raven rolled her eyes. “Have you even done anything that you could be fired for?” She asked that with a tone that implied a negative answer, but then she reconsidered and added, “Except for, I guess, fucking the football coach,” Clarke’s eyes widened, “but we scoured the faculty handbook multiple times on your request and found no rules about coworkers dating.” Raven looked over and unpeeled Clarke’s fingers from the desk she was now tightly gripping. “Look, if I had to guess, he probably just wants to set up a time to observe your class as a part of evaluation this year. That would make sense, yeah?”

Clarke took a deep breath in. “Yeah. That would make sense.”

And this is what Clarke assured herself all day. In her mind, it was going to be a quick meeting. She had already glanced at her planner and determined a few class periods that would be a safe bet for having someone evaluate her. She was ready. 

But not for walking into Wallace’s office to have four other teachers already sitting there. 

“Um, hello?” She said as she took the only remaining chair. Was she in trouble? Was this some sort of disciplinary board? She received murmured replies from the rest of the teachers sitting there. 

“Great!” Wallace rubbed his hands together behind his desk. “Now that we're all here, we can get started!”

He seemed very excited about whatever it was that had brought them all together, but the room fell silent. 

After a beat or two, the art teacher clicked her tongue softly and asked exactly what Clarke had been thinking: “What exactly are we here for?”

Wallace leaned forward in his chair, chuckling to himself, seemingly nonplussed that he had given them no indication of their meeting’s purpose. “Ah, did I not make it clear?” He ran a hand through his dark hair and made a show of shrugging in apology. It was weird that when Bellamy ran his hand through his hair in the exact same fashion, Clarke found it compelling, but when Cage did it, it just felt… slimy. “I thought this would make a nice group to provide feedback on our school’s allocation of funds.” 

Clarke couldn’t deny it: She was intrigued. She desperately wanted to know more about what was going on behind the scenes at their school, and she definitely had thoughts and opinions on anything and everything. But she looked around the room: The kooky art teacher, a math teacher who had probably taught dinosaurs, the stuck-up librarian who marked kids who were three seconds late as tardy, the English teacher who replied-all to EVERYTHING with “Thanks!” and her? What was she doing here? 

Wallace continued: “You five have all provided feedback on our school environment through various surveys, and, conveniently, you also represent the diversity of our faculty!”

It was truly sad to say that this group of four white women and one black man was considered “diverse,” but that’s about the way schools unfolded in small towns, Clarke conceded. And there was a range of roles and experience, so there was that. It wasn’t a great group, but it could have been worse. 

“What exactly are you asking of us, then?” the English teacher asked, nervously crossing and uncrossing her legs. Hey-- maybe this would actually be a good chance for Clarke to finally remember her name. Despite her reply-all nature, she seemed decent. She could be an additional friend. 

“Glad you asked!” Wallace’s enthusiasm was unsettling. Clarke tried to maintain eye-contact but found herself constantly adjusting her gaze. “We’ll just meet a few times, hear from you guys about what you think needs more attention, and try to make some adjustments! No need to worry about all of the nitty gritty details-- I’ll be handling that.” 

The room fell into an uncomfortable silence. When it got long enough that Clarke was just about to speak up just for the sake of breaking it, Wallace jumped back into things. “So! Today I thought we’d consider parts of our school that could use more funds allocated to them. The survey results indicate that faculty would like us to consider the theatre program, the humanities hall bathrooms, and professional development. Thoughts?”

Unfortunately, this launched a whole soliloquy from the librarian who evidently had been campaigning for bathroom remodels across the school for a while now and felt that these concerns were left unheard. After ten minutes of descriptions of dim lighting and crude graffiti, Clarke couldn’t take it anymore. She finally threw in her opinion. “I did hear some of my students saying they wished they had a better budget for theatre costumes. Considering our school is one of the few places in town that offers live theatre and they sold out their last show, I think they more than deserve a bump.”

The art teacher was quick to agree with Clarke, going off on a long-winded story about helping mix paints for set design. As Clarke tuned her out, she realized that Wallace was not actually focused on her coworker, but rather glancing over to her every few moments to see how she responded. 

Though it didn’t feel like they really accomplished much, Clarke did feel like she had contributed in some way when Wallace brought the meeting to a close about forty-five minutes later. It was only when they were all walking out the door that the math teacher spoke for the first time. “You know,” he said, looking back at them from the doorway, “It’s always easier to decide where to give money than it is to decide where to take it away from.” 

Clarke let that settle in as she walked to her car, and then quickly called Raven up on Bluetooth.

Raven answered on the first ring. “You getting fired then?”

“Haha no,” Clarke responded, already trying to decide if she should head over to Bellamy’s or go home and go on a run. “I’m now on some committee.”

Raven groaned. 

“What!”

“I can already guess who is on it: two teachers who’ve been around for a while, some token person of color, that art teacher who throws a fit whenever she’s not included, and their young teacher representation-- you.”

Clarke thought through the group. “Well, yeah.”

“I was put on so many random committees last year for that reason. They’re all about ‘young blood,’ but then they don’t actually listen to what we have to say.”

“I’m not sure. I think we might actually make some changes.” 

“With what?”

“Budget allocations.”

A bigger groan from Raven. “Girl, you got played. They do something like this every year. That way when people get mad about how we spend our money, they can say, “We had teacher input!’”

“But at least isn’t that somewhat better than them just going ahead and doing without any feedback?”

“I guess it depends: Would you rather have someone know they are lying to you or get so good at lying that they think they are telling the truth?”

“Huh.”

“Huh is right. Anyway, you doing anything tonight? La Parada is doing half-off margaritas.”

That did sound good. They were hitting that time of year where it was too brisk to sit outside, but while margs reminded Clarke of summer, there was something cozy about tucking into a little Mexican restaurant and trying to keep your scarf from falling into your fajitas. “I want to go on a run, but does 7 work?”

Raven fake gasped. “You mean you’ll ditch Bellamy’s abs for my company?”

“Just for one night. Don’t get too cocky.”

“Alright. See you then.”

Speaking of those abs, Clarke texted Bellamy to say she was heading out with Raven for the night but that she’d probably swing by tomorrow. She did feel a little bad. Ever since the season ended, he had definitely been a little aimless. 

He assured her that it happened every year at the end of the season, but it was weird to see him make that switch. 

He texted back quickly-- again-- another sign that he was more bored than usual-- threatening to watch the next episode of _Ozark_ without her. She assured him that he could wait just 24 hours to find out what happened next as she laced up her shoes. 

As she got ready to head out the door, her phone buzzed. She normally would be irritated that someone was interrupting her schedule, but she picked it up anyway.

“Hey.” She did like his voice.

“You calling to spoil the next episode?”

“Nah-- you’re heading out for a run, right?”

“Literally walking out the door.”

“Perfect. I don’t want to waste your time, but you have about 36 minutes until sundown and 51 until last light. Just so you know. So you’re safe. Because…”

She cut him off. “Thanks, Bellamy. Get a hobby, Bellamy. See you tomorrow, Bellamy. Bye, Bellamy.”

He laughed and hung up. She went out for her run with a smile plastered across her face. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Raise your hand if you have shady administrators! (RAISES HAND AGGRESSIVELY).


	16. I'm as Nowhere as I Can Be

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: Has a plan for the chapter.  
> Characters: Um... not feeling that.

### I'm As Nowhere As I Can Be

Bellamy always felt unanchored at the end of a season. Sure, he moved into the next season of coaching, but there was something weird about transitioning from the high of a championship season to the just level-headedness of conditioning at the beginning of the next. From spending every spare moment looking at other teams’ stats and rewriting plays to just trying to make sure he had the freshmen’s names down.

Plus, he wouldn’t deny it to anyone who asked, football was by far his favorite sport to coach. So it was like the year started out with his favorite thing and then went all downhill from there. 

There was also some awkwardness that always came with basketball season too. See, much like the football coach Bellamy had replaced, the boys’ basketball coach had been at the Ark for decades, but this one showed no signs of retiring any time soon.

So Bellamy coached the girls. 

Which was fine, really. It was a great change of pace, and he had found they were much easier to get to stick to a strategy rather than just be a showboater going for half-court shots. 

However, it did mean he dealt with lingering stares from his players-- something he didn’t really have to deal with on the football team. 

Teenage girls were shameless-- SHAMELESS-- and they just egged each other on when they got in a pack. The number of poorly concealed double entendres that happened on just the first day was absurd. Bellamy had insisted upon a female assistant coach, but she mostly just sat on the bleachers and rolled her eyes since she didn’t have much of a basketball background. O had joined the team when he started coaching it her junior year, and that had kept the comments to a minimum for those two years at least. In fact, Bellamy was somewhat convinced that this was the entire reason she had joined the team in the first place. 

Bellamy decided to call her and ask about it on the way home after the first week of practices.

“Uh, duh,” she responded. “It certainly wasn’t because I was a ‘baller.’”

“And here I was thinking you just wanted some more time with your big brother.”

“Dude. You were my guardian. If anything I wanted  _ less _ time with you. But I also already had to deal with you working at school; the last thing I needed was for all of my friends to slobber over you.”

“Because I’m sure they weren’t doing that behind your back at every other moment.”

He could feel her withering gaze through the phone. “Ya know, your ego has become far too large since you got a girlfriend.”

“My ego has always been this large. And she’s not my girlfriend.”

“Of course not; she’s just a girl you spend most of your free time and make out with and think about all the time and LOVE.”

“Aggressive word choice there, O.”

“So Miller and I were talking…”

“I already hate where this is going.”

“... and I should come home and meet her.”

Actually, really not the worst thing Bellamy had ever heard. Mostly because Octavia had not been home for a few weeks now, and while Thanksgiving was around the corner, it would be nice to see her face and know that it was another weekend where she wasn’t getting potentially impregnated at Vanderbilt. 

“Plus…”

“Plus?”

“I’ve been seeing someone.”

It took all of Bellamy’s power not to vomit in his mouth. He knew that this was natural, that his little sister would and, in fact, should date people. And actually that if she was telling him about someone, it was better than her keeping it all a secret. And yet, it took a lot of self-restraint to not immediately want to throttle the guy. 

“Not that kid from last year?”

“Hell no. This guy is way better.” 

“Next weekend?”

“I’ll check with Lincoln, but next weekend should work.”

“He’s sleeping on the couch.”

“I would expect nothing less.”

“I’ll warn Clarke. And see you then. Love you.”

“Love you.”

Bellamy flopped on the couch when he got home and informed Miller that O would be coming the next weekend. “With a boy,” he emphasized.

Miller hummed in acknowledgment and continued unloading the dishwasher.

“You knew? You knew and didn’t tell me?”

“O and I have a very special relationship, Bellamy.”

“No sense of loyalty, that girl,” Bellamy moaned.

“Hopefully you’re not talking about me.” Clarke nudged the shoe that was wedged in the door to keep it open for her, joining in on the conversation. She leaned over Bellamy on the couch, giving him a quick peck, her blonde curls tickling his cheeks. He couldn’t help but smile up at her. 

“Never.” He grabbed her by the waist and pulled her down on the couch with him. “Unless there’s something you need to tell me?” They hadn’t had an official “we’re exclusive” talk yet, but the previous weekend, she had acknowledged that she was far too busy to be juggling multiple partners and he had said the same. So that was good enough, he figured. 

“I don’t know; it might be that you have something to share.” She side-eyed a smirk at him. “Emori tells me that some of the girls on the team have quite an elaborate scheme to seduce you.”

Bellamy rubbed his hand emphatically across his face. Miller snorted in the kitchen. “It’s really weird that you gossip with the students, Clarke.”

“He’s got a point there,” Miller added from the kitchen.

Clarke put her hands up defensively. “Hey-- Emori just tells me everything. I do nothing to provoke her.” 

Miller moved from the living room into the kitchen. “You know what would probably solve your problems?” He let a satisfied smile slip onto his face. “Telling them that you have a girlfriend.”

Bellamy looked over at Clarke to see how she responded, but she was already looking at him. She didn’t let her blue eyes slip from his as she responded to Miller, “Sounds like a lot of work.”

“Probably wouldn’t work anyway. Just makes for more of a chase in their eyes.” Bellamy tried to keep his gaze from slipping down to Clarke’s lips, but he failed miserably. They were just so perfectly pink. 

“Your ego is too big,” she whispered leaning in closer. 

“Second time I’ve heard that today.” He closed the distance between them, snaking a hand through her hair as he worked to memorize the contours of her mouth.

“Well,” Miller added abruptly. “I’m making nachos if anyone needs to eat.”

Bellamy could have ignored his roommate in favor of just consuming Clarke for the rest of his life, but evidently things weren’t quite the same for Clarke. She pulled away to confirm. 

Bellamy tried to get as much information out of Miller about this mysterious Lincoln as he could at dinner, but he was unable to determine much. 

*****

What did one wear to meet their not-quite-boyfriend’s little sister? Clarke had done the “meet the parents” experiment a couple of times now, and, not to brag, but she had it down pat. Parents loved her. 

Cool college-aged sisters? She was less sure. Plus, this was literally all of Bellamy’s family. It was like sister, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, second-cousins, the whole shebang all at once. 

She had gone home after school to change. She figured her general school-marm look wasn’t the best representation of who she was.

Clarke had also spent lunch that day milking Eric for details on the younger Blake. He hadn’t actually taught her, but he had at least seen her around and had some background.

“Spiky.”

“What?”

“That’s how I would describe her. Spiky.”

“That’s a fucking weird description, Eric,” Raven added, spearing into her salad. 

“I mean, like, the girl had been through a lot by the time I got here, right? So she was just a bit defensive. No big blow-outs or drama or anything, but just kind of a loner. Didn’t click with any of the teachers really. I know I saw Bellamy in more than a few meetings with her teachers, which had to have been awkward since he was only like five years out at that point. Not really when people expect you to have a high schooler on your hands.”

So now Clarke stood in front of her closet, wondering which outfit would come across best to a former spiky high schooler. 

And a former spiky high schooler's boyfriend. Bellamy had made sure to add in that her boyfriend was coming too everytime this meeting had come up in the last week. 

She ended up going simple. Jeans, boots, v-neck tee. Blank slate. Octavia could project whatever she wanted upon her. 

Clarke shed her jacket the minute she walked through the door of their apartment; something was sizzling in the kitchen and something spicy was definitely on the menu for tonight because Clarke’s eyes were already watering a bit. 

Bellamy quickly intercepted her with a kiss. “He’s  _ old _ ,” he whispered in her ear. 

_ What? _ She mouthed back at him. Bellamy’s right eye twitched slightly as he tilted his head toward the kitchen. 

Clarke came around the corner to see a young girl with dark hair stirring in a pan, a tall man next to her slicing vegetables with a practiced hand and enormous arms. Oh, that was no college boy that Bellamy’s little sister had brought home. She blinked hard and tried to not raise her eyebrows too high.

Clarke caught Miller’s eye as he barely restrained laughter at her reaction. 

The girl evidently noticed that she was being watched and looked up. Clarke saw the familial resemblance at once-- the dark eyes that stared straight into your soul and the smattering of freckles that decorated the face. “Hey!” she said. She quickly wiped her hands on a nearby towel and threw her arms around Clarke. Spiky? “You must be Clarke.”

“That’s me.” Clarke could feel Bellamy pacing slightly behind her like a horse that sensed a lion nearby. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Back atcha. And this strong silent type behind me is Lincoln.”

Lincoln looked up from the salad he was creating to give a short “hey.” Clarke couldn’t deny it: Octavia had good taste. From what she had heard about Octavia’s former suitors from Bellamy, they had all been immature boys. Maybe she had taken his criticism too close to the chest because she had brought home a man. 

Despite all Clarke’s nerves, the evening seemed to pass without incident. Over bowls of perhaps slightly too spicy homemade pad thai, Clarke contented herself with mostly listening to the small family catch up. However, she found that she was able to jump into the conversation at multiple points. Clarke had had some of the same professors as Octavia at Vanderbilt, and they shared a hatred for the director of student services. Octavia asked Clarke more than a few questions in return; each seemingly innocent but edged with the sense of “Are you good for my brother?” It was a cute level of protectiveness.

Eventually, it was clear that Bellamy couldn’t hold it in anymore. “So, how did you two meet again?” Clarke tried not to chuckle at him trying to keep his face unreadable. She placed a hand against his thigh. He reached down and threaded his fingers through hers. 

Octavia looked over at her boyfriend, who had spent most of the evening quiet. They seemed to come to some silent agreement as he spoke next. “Actually, I was a guest lecturer for Octavia’s History of Martial Arts class. I offered a Krav Maga class to anyone who wanted to try things out first hand.”

“I was the only one who showed up,” Octavia added.

“We waited a while for others, spent some time going through a few simple moves, and then the rest of the time just talking.”

“Really, you’re to blame here, Bell. If you hadn’t spent so much of my childhood geeking out over ancient battles, we wouldn’t have had anything to talk about.”

Clarke could tell that Bellamy was trying to make it look like his interest was not piqued by this clear pandering to his passions. He cleared his throat. “Aren’t there rules against that?”

“Well…” Octavia started.

Lincoln jumped in. “I have no influence over her grade in the course, and, in fact, I’m not planning on lecturing in that class again.”

“And now that requirement is met, so I doubt we will overlap again. Plus, from what I hear, we might not be the only people used to keeping our relationship on the down low.” Octavia took a long sip of wine. Bellamy just stared right through her. 

“Fine,” he conceded. He turned to Lincoln, finally able to ask the academic questions he was more interested in. 

And so that’s how Clarke ended up spending more hours than she ever had in her entire life hearing about how ancient Roman battle strategy compared to that of ancient China. She couldn’t say she was any more interested in the topic at the end of the conversation than when it started. 

At a later hour than Clarke usually liked to stay up after a day at school, they finally migrated to bedrooms, Bellamy standing firm on Lincoln sleeping on the couch. 

“He seems good,” Clarke mumbled into the pillow sleepily as Bellamy wrapped an arm around her waist. She loved the feeling of his large warm hands against her side; it made her feel tiny and protected. 

“Yeah; he’s alright,” Bellamy begrudgingly admitted. 

Clarke flipped over, removing his hand from her waist but taking it between hers instead. “Bellamy,” she said seriously.

He cracked an eye open, peering at her through those thick lashes she would kill for, sheet creases already forming on his freckled cheeks. “What.”

“You have to give him more than that. You just had an extended and informed conversation about one of your favorite things with the guy your sister is dating.” 

Bellamy turned over to his back and stared up at the ceiling. One of his hands moved to run through his hair, but Clarke kept the other firmly within her own. Silence settled. Clarke thought back through the dinner. 

“That’s part of the problem, isn’t it?” she realized. Bellamy looked over at her but didn’t say anything. Clarke made sure to keep her voice low, knowing that the subjects of their conversation were just through the walls. “You’re a bit jealous.” She scooted herself in a bit closer to him. 

His voice was so low it could barely qualify as a whisper. “It’s not really fair to hold that against him,” Bellamy conceded, his gaze back at the ceiling. 

They hadn’t discussed it in so many words, but Clarke could tell from the way that Bellamy’s face lit up every time he got to bring up some obscure ancient world fact that he missed his program. The way that he raved about getting to sub for 6th-grade classes because their history curriculum was the ancient world, so even if he was subbing a math class, he could find a way to tie it in. Hell, the fact that the Mary Beard’s  _ Women and Power _ was sitting within arms reach right now and that he often interrupted her own reading to share passages out loud. 

Bellamy loved football, loved coaching and teaching, that much was clear to Clarke, but it came nowhere close to the natural way he just lost himself when engaged in his own academia. And now his little sister had brought home someone who was essentially living the life he had left to take care of her.

"You can still go back.” She untangled her hand from his and traced his jawline. Bellamy had started to let it get a bit scruffy, and though Clarke sometimes pretended it was gross, it was really starting to grow on her. 

“Maybe.” He finally turned back to face her. He cradled her face between his hands, and though it was dark, she could see some of the tension in his brow unfurrow. “Maybe,” he repeated and kissed her on the forehead. “I’ll be nice to him.”

“Does being nice include picking up Vera’s for them tomorrow morning?”

“What time are you getting up?” Clarke clicked the light on her watch and informed him in just over five hours. “I’ll be meeting you there, not running with you.” 

“Sounds good to me.” They settled back into the spooning position they had started the night in, Bellamy pressing a kiss against her shoulder. “And you know what? Advanced degree or not, you’re still one of the smartest people I have ever met.”

Bellamy held the next kiss against her shoulder a bit longer, and Clarke fell asleep to him looping her curls through his fingers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm also at the start of a Reylo fic, so if you're in that fandom as well, keep your eyes peeled!


	17. Feelings They Arrest You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woof-- it's been a while guys; I'm sorry! Since I last updated, I moved out of the apartment I have lived in for the past five years (which was emotional), watched a very different graduation of my last group of students at my current position (which was also very emotional), and tried to settle into some sense of routine that comes with not teaching every day (which is just challenging for me). Plus I'm writing grade narratives and trying to figure out what my curriculum at my new position looks like. 
> 
> I did start a Reylo fic, and I'm almost done with the second chapter of that one as well if you're into that kind of thing. Also I might have an Emori oneshot to go with this, but let's try to just tackle one thing at a time.

### Feelings They Arrest You

Bellamy practically floated through the next week. 

Once he managed to pack his own stupid insecurities deep down in some chest that seemed to hang in between his bellybutton and his ribcage, he had actually really had enjoyed his little sister’s trip home. Even with a large man looming over her. 

And, okay, Lincoln appeared to be pretty cool. Yes, he would prefer his sister to date a man whom he could undoubtedly obliterate if there was ever an opportunity that called for it, but after 48 hours with the guy, Bellamy doubted that any opportunity even close to that would come to fruition with Lincoln. It didn’t hurt that with someone there to impress, O never let her bad habits get the best of her. Octavia was the most studious she had ever been on a weekend trip home-- even picking up a book to read  _ for fun _ \-- and vacuumed the living room without Bellamy even commenting on its state. So if Lincoln was going to make her a better person, maybe he could put the age thing aside. 

Plus, his conversation with Clarke had gotten him to do what he had been meaning to do since his advisor emailed him after Octavia graduated: Look into his options. He resurfaced the thread and had started emailing back and forth, and he was surprised by how comfortable it was to get back into what he had thought was going to be painful. 

He even pulled down some of his own journals and started reading through his old notes, skimming through his ideas for the dissertation he had planned on writing. 

It mostly made him realize that he was, in fact, quite rusty on his Latin, and even worse off with his ancient Greek. 

_ Odi et amo.  _

The choir teacher at the Ark appeared to have come down with the flu, which meant Bellamy had a consistent gig throughout the week, even if that gig just required he remember where they had left off in  _ Cats _ (the original production, not the CGI nightmare-inducing monstrosity-- thank god). As the Jellicle cats went out and frolicked in skin-tight fursuits, Bellamy sat in the back of the room determining how he could potentially brush up on his skills somewhere nearby. 

ArkCC was within his limited budget; however, there was nothing in their course catalog that truly thrilled him or looked like it would be anything other than a review. He wondered if he could at least TA one of the intro Latin classes and had an email sitting in his drafts folder addressed to the administrative assistant of the foreign language department.

He hadn’t mentioned any of this to Clarke. For one: he had spent the beginning of the week mostly subtly sliding in hints that Octavia had in fact liked her despite any nerves or second-guessing she kept on engaging in about the situation. It wasn’t the time to bring in his own stupid crap thoughts. 

Plus, if he talked about it-- if he mentioned that he wanted to go back or at least get his feet back in the water-- that made it real. That meant there was a possibility of failure. Or-- worse-- a possibility that Octavia would find out and assume he was leaving when there was no possibility he was going to leave Ark until she was out of college and securely employed somewhere. 

Nevertheless, these prospects buoyed him. Bellamy felt like he was returning to his true state of being. He even tried to name one of their plays the testudo, which was met with stares from twelve teenage girls that ranged somewhere between bewilderment and disappointment. Perhaps this was the best way to nuke their seduction strategies: bore them with ancient Roman references. 

He was mentally engaged enough elsewhere, that part of him wondered if that was why Niylah had asked him to stop by her office after Friday’s practice. However, he assured himself that the AD really just wanted to talk through the following week’s game: the Mountain Men were infamous for their particularly vitriolic parent population that often provoked unsportsmanlike conduct from their opponents’ players and coaches alike. 

So after talking himself out of the worst-case scenario, Bellamy was confused to find Niylah sitting uncomfortably shuffling papers at her desk with Cage Wallace sitting across from her. 

“Oh, sorry, just let me know when you need me, Niylah,” he said, backing out of the office with a smile. 

“No, please come in, Bellamy! You’re exactly who I needed to talk to,” Wallace said, turning the chair next to him to make it easily accessible to Bellamy. There was something about the man’s artificial cheeriness that always put Bellamy on edge. He caught Niylah’s eye as he sat down, and he could tell she was doing her best to silently communicate an apology. 

The office grew quiet. Bellamy uncomfortably fidgeted in his seat, unsure if he should be looking at Niylah, who was ostensibly his boss and supervisor, or Cage Wallace, who certainly held more power in the school but really had nothing to do with his day to day job. 

“So, Bellamy,” Wallace said, and Bellamy noted that this was probably the most the man had ever said to him in the four years he had worked at the school. He wondered if he had studied his name before talking into this meeting by the way he said it with such purpose. “There is really no great way to say this.”

Bellamy felt his eyes squint in confusion before darting over to Niylah again, who appeared to be avoiding his gaze. Was he getting fired? Had his girls said he had done something inappropriate? He wracked through his head every interaction of the season to see if it could be misconstrued, but he knew he had been careful at every turn. Had someone gone back through his old pictures on Facebook and complained that he was holding red Solo cups in too many of them? Did people even look through Facebook photos anymore?

“It appears you are going to be taking a pay cut this year. I have all of the forms you need to sign, and we will prorate your first few paychecks of the year to accommodate for this difference.”

Bellamy could feel his squint becoming aggressively tight at this point as he repeated these words in his head. “I’m sorry, what?” He tried to keep his tone light. This had to be a joke, right?

“So the administration has decided to cut funding to the athletics program this year, and as a result, your salary is going to be less.”

Bellamy’s chin jutted forward and he looked at the man next to him with suspicion. He leaned to put an elbow on his friend’s desk, hoping she would provide some explanation, but she remained silent. “Am I… fired?”

Cage Wallace emitted what Bellamy guessed most would consider to be a laugh, if a laugh were made by a robot trying to imitate human emotions. “Of course not. We want you to continue doing the great work you have provided our school with.”

“Just for…” Bellamy chanced a glance over at the paperwork that had been passed his way and almost wanted to burst into tears at the sight of it, “$10,000 less than what you were previously paying me?” He waited for someone to correct him. That was absurd. That would mean he was no longer putting anything into his savings every month. That would mean cutting Octavia’s grocery budget and hoping that Miller would foot a larger percentage of the rent. That meant that even the small expense of ArkCC was certainly out of the question. All of that time and energy this week was for nothing. “What? Why? When was this decided?”

“Well, Bellamy,” If that man said his name once more, he was going to walk out of here with a broken nose, “We had a group of faculty meet a few weeks ago, and they decided that we need to allocate more of our resources to our art department.”

“And they said, ‘Let’s just stop paying one of our coaches a livable wage.’”

“Bellamy,” Bellamy's knuckles tightened involuntarily in response to his name, “I know that this is a surprise, and I just want to let you know how much we here at the Ark appreciate how you have helped this program.”

_ Helluva way of showing it _ , Bellamy only just kept the words from erupting from his mouth. 

“But we looked through and considered each item of our budget equally, and, of course, we are all making sacrifices to make this happen. You are one of us, a part of our team.”

Bellamy rubbed the documents between his fingers. “And what happens if I don’t sign this? I already signed my contract, I already agreed what I would be paid for my job.” He could hear Niylah sigh from behind her desk, but he had given up on looking to her for support. 

Cage Wallace smiled-- a toadlike smile laced with venom. A poison dart frog smile. “Well, as I am sure you know, we are a dismiss at will district, so that would mean you seeking employment elsewhere.”

_ Bullshit, _ Bellamy thought.  _ Bullshit scare tactic _ . He worked hard to keep his steely glare focused on the slimy man seated in front of him.  _ You don’t want to go through a hiring process again. There would be too many parent complaints if you lost your basketball coach in the middle of a season. How would that look?  _

“Well, it sounds like I have a lot to consider then,” Bellamy finally blurted out, grabbing the paperwork and heading out of the office. “Thanks for letting me know how important I am to this  _ team _ .” 

*****

Bellamy spent his drive replaying the entire brief meeting over and over-- slowing it down to half speed in some parts, providing dramatic sound effects to others. He wrote at least three speeches and half a dozen emails in his head, and then would rewrite them to add more flair and drama. He was seeing enough red that he didn’t even realize where he had driven until he was parked outside of Clarke’s apartment. He considered just heading home, but then the document glared at him from the passenger seat. 

“I’m downstairs,” he texted. “Can you buzz me in.”

He flung the door open the second the lock started to retreat and took the stairs two at a time up to her floor. She stood at the door, looking beautiful as always, still wearing muddy shoes from her afternoon run. 

Seeing her was almost enough to make him want to forget the last few hours of his life through some healthy fucking and maybe a delivery of pizza, but as he walked up, she kissed him on the cheek and gestured to the paper now crinkling in his hand. “Whatcha got there?”

And his vision blurred red at the edges again. He strode into her apartment, relating the meeting using a combination of the retellings he had worked through on his drive. There was probably some elaboration, some things left out for dramatic purpose.

As Bellamy finished his tale and caught his breath, he finally looked over to see how Clarke was responding to this. 

Normally when Clarke came in from a run in brisk weather, her cheeks were deliciously flushed and her eyes shiny with energy, but at this moment, she looked ashen and wary. “And you’re sure you have no choice in this? No room for negotiation?”

“It does not fucking appear to be so,” he responded, still angry but flopping onto the couch with a sense of resignation.

“And Cage Wallace just gets to decide what to do with the school’s budget willy-nilly? That seems weird, Bells. There’s no way this just went through.” She placed her hand on top of his as she sat on the couch next to him.

“He said something about a group of faculty who made the decision.” He leaned back and rubbed his hands across his face, not entirely sure if he was actually going to be able to hold back tears for real at this point. 

Clarke sat silently next to him. Her hand suddenly felt stiff rather than supple on top of his. 

He removed his face from his hands to gauge her reaction. 

Clarke was staring straight ahead. If he hadn’t known her for multiple weeks now, he would have thought she was lost in thought, but he knew her better than that now: This was her face when she felt panicked. 

“Clarke?”

She slowly turned to face him. He watched her throat bob as she took a deep gulp. “Bellamy.” His name did sound better in her voice, but she had never said it in quite this tone before. “Bellamy: There’s something you need to know.”

Her hand fell away from his entirely. He was not sure if it was intentional or not.

“I think I was in that group of faculty members.”

His feet moved without him instructing them to. Bellamy was back up, pacing the room, unable to meet Clarke’s eyes even as he felt them searching for his, wondering if this was how Niylah had felt in her office with him. 

“They never said they were taking money away from you though-- they just asked for recommendations for departments that needed more funding.” Clarke’s words were rushed, pouring over him like a wave. He could almost feel the burn of saltwater in his nose. 

“And you didn’t think for a second-- just a second-- who they would take that money away from?” It was unfortunate he couldn’t quite maintain the tone of snark he had been able to take with Cage Wallace.

“Of course we did, but they did not ask for our input on that.” Clarke’s voice had turned steely cold. She had returned to her calm cadence.

“Do you even care? Do you even care that you have potentially destroyed my life? I can’t afford this loss?”

“Bellamy.” Ugh his name on her tongue was starting to feel sickly sweet-- cloying and humid in the air. He was suffocating. “Of course I care. I never would have said anything if I had known it would put your livelihood at risk.”

He scoffed. He hated who he was. He hated that she was a part of this. 

“Well, that’s just the thing, isn’t it? You don’t think because you don’t have to think. You don’t have to think about how others might have things harder than you.”

“Bellamy: that’s not fair.” How was her voice so calm? Didn’t she care? Didn’t she see? “You can’t blame this on me. We were all there just trying to do what is best for the kids.”

He just stared at her. Silence. It oozed in blackness from each corner of the room, creeping until all he could really sense was her blank face leveled with his.

“You’re not, like, actually angry with me about this, are you?”

Okay, he thought he hated the calm, the silence, but this felt worse. Yes, he was angry. He was allowed to be. 

She huffed a bit. “Bellamy, think of this as an opportunity. Maybe this means this is the time to go back to school, just like you wanted?”

Typical. If Bellamy’s mom had been a doctor rather than a cashier, maybe he would also think it would just be that simple. You’re not making as much money? Yeah, just quit and spend  _ that money you no longer have _ on a degree that will  _ never _ make you money.

“You know nothing.” 

And with that, he turned and walked out of the apartment. He had no intention of returning. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not sure if anything that happened here is legal in the slightest, and also I hope that the fight made sense in some ways, but I also know that it is coming from Bellamy's eyes, so Clarke's reactions aren't supposed to make total sense. And look at me-- trying out this entire plot thing. Though, I think I've been trying to make this scene happen since like Chapter 12, so I don't know how much of a success I would really call it. 
> 
> There was another bit to this chapter that I wanted to include, but it just didn't quite fit, so maybe it'll get inserted later. Maybe it will only ever happen in my head.


	18. The Battleships Will Sink Between the Waves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> LAST TIME ON "RUN LIKE A RIVER"
> 
> Biology teacher Clarke screwed with football coach Bellamy's team. Snarkiness ensued. Snarkiness turns into flirtation. Flirtation leads to something somewhat more??? 
> 
> Clarke is recruited to a task force at school by the gross Dean Cage Wallace. Bellamy is called into a meeting with Wallace and is told that his salary is being cut. Bellamy goes to Clarke to rant. Clarke reveals she may have accidentally played a role in this. Bellamy is upset and storms out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As Octavia says, "I'M BACK, BITCHES!"

### The Battleships Will Sink Beneath the Waves

Clarke stared at the door, listening to the click of the lock automatically engaging after Bellamy's outburst and storm out. What the fuck had just happened? She flexed her fingers, and then placed them into each palm until each finger gave a satisfying pop. They still felt tense. She rolled her head in each direction, which provided a couple satisfying cracks, but she still didn’t feel better. She still felt too contained, too tight, like that time she left a bottle of kombucha in her car and came back to find the lid engorged with pressure. 

She had just thrown that bottle away. Some things weren’t meant to be opened. 

But really: How could Bellamy blame her for this? She hadn’t been in any meeting where he was discussed, or even any where it was even mentioned that there were going to be any changes to how the budget was allocated. 

How was she supposed to know that his salary was something up on the chopping block? 

She traced the underside of each fingernail with an incisor, her mind falling blank until it was interrupted by a ding. The oven was preheated. How long ago had she set it? Had she managed to have that entire conversation with Bellamy and then sit with her thoughts for what felt like years, all in the time it took for her oven to reach 375 degrees?

It was kind of a crappy oven. 

Clarke wasn’t really hungry, but she shoved the frozen pizza inside all the same. And then she paced between the small living room and even smaller kitchen trying to remember what exactly it was that she had been doing before Bellamy had texted her to let him up. 

She couldn’t remember for the life of her.

Or maybe she would be able to remember if she were able to do anything except replay the entire evening in her head on repeat. 

She picked up a lone sock that had escaped under the couch into a hamper. She wiped down the kitchen table, scrubbed off the omnipresent ring on her coffee table. “You know nothing” ricocheted through her head with each step she took through her small living room. 

When the pizza was done, she gnawed through a few pieces while scrolling through Instagram, absentmindedly liking the pictures she knew she had a social obligation to like. 

Even though it was her go-to frozen pizza, the cheese felt faker and gummier than usual. She wrapped the remaining slices in tinfoil anyway, but when she opened up the fridge to store the leftovers, there wasn’t a clear place to put them.

This, of all things, was what brought her to tears. 

She touched a finger to her cheek, almost surprised to find it damp. Clarke did not cry easy. 

She figured it was a symptom of losing a parent at a young age. 

That thought, of course, made her lip wobble in earnest, and calm crying unraveled into a full-on sob-fest that led her to slip to the white linoleum floor; tinfoil-wrapped pizza still in hand. 

Clarke sat with a handle digging into her back for at least five minutes-- she didn’t check a clock, but it was somewhere between that and a year. Finally, she swiped her eyes with the base of her palm.  _ What’s even going on?  _ Clarke hoisted herself off the floor, balancing the pizza haphazardly on top of a yogurt, and throwing herself onto the couch for what she thought would be a slightly more dignified cry. But now that she was upright, she had a sense of composure she had been struggling to obtain. 

Her phone was still in her hand. Somewhere amongst the chaos, she ended up deep in the explore section of the #henrimatisse tag. Sniffling once more, she swiped over to her phone log and let her hand dance over Bellamy’s name. It was littered throughout the list-- unavoidable. Just having her phone open to her recent calls was like a minefield of accidentally calling him. 

She wasn’t even sure if what had happened merited a call. Surely he would calm down? This was just the heat of the moment. He would come to see that she played no role in any of this. 

Clarke flicked over to her texts, figuring she would send him a text-- some sort of apology? But what was she apologizing for? This really could be an opportunity for him, right? She composed a couple of messages, but none rang exactly true-- the first felt like deflection, the next six felt overly accommodating. She pressed into the backspace key with enough vigor that she wondered if you could bruise the pad of your thumb. 

She flopped backward onto the couch. Whatever it was Clarke had been going for or expected of this night, she had failed. 

It felt wrong to sit here in silence. She should be talking to someone right now, right? That felt like something one of her therapists had said at some point. She returned her face to her phone screen, brought herself back to that minefield of her call log. 

She should call Raven. That was what she had friends for. Calling them in times of need, and Raven had already proven to be aligned with Clarke’s way of viewing affairs of the heart. 

Shit. Clarke quickly locked her screen. Heart? Is that what she was dealing with here-- affairs of the heart rather than a fling with her nemesis? Suddenly bringing someone else into this mess felt far too intimate. 

This would be the time that most girls called their moms, Clarke figured, but she most certainly did not feel like explaining to her mother how she had been having sex casually with someone she worked with. Some things neither Clarke nor Abby were ready for. 

Clarke let her phone fall to the ground, where the black screen would no longer reflect her embarrassingly puffy face back at her. She turned on the tv, putting on an episode of  _ Instant Hotel _ so at least the apartment didn’t feel quite so oppressively quiet. 

Eventually, she made her way to bed. She had never considered it to be lonely before.

*****

It took Bellamy a while to actually turn the key in the ignition in his car. He did nothing as dramatic as kick the door of the piece of shit he drove or pound his hands against the steering wheel-- those were the actions of teenage Bellamy, and he was now a full-grown man. An adult with adult problems handled in adult ways. 

His reassurances to himself that he had handled the last few hours of his life in the best way possible considering the circumstances helped clear his vision enough to safely drive home. The spot he always parked in-- right next to Miller’s-- was taken. Something that had been happening more and more lately, much to Bellamy’s irritation. Sure, the spot immediately next to it was clear, and he was easily able to pull into it, but he was still inordinately proud of himself for not wildly swinging his door open to dent the usurper. 

At least it redirected his anger for a solid three minutes. 

Bellamy created a game plan as he marched the stairs up to the third floor: Tonight, he would rant with Miller, who would agree with his side (obviously). He might get a little drunk. Tomorrow, he would look at his budget. He would find ways to cut edges, to make it work. He would write a saccharine email to Cage Wallace, apologizing for his behavior. This was his job, really, all he had. He needed this job. 

It was hard work to find times to see Clarke during the school day. It would not be challenging to find ways to avoid her. 

“I need this job. I can avoid Clarke” became a rhythmic mantra by the time he reached the last flight of stairs. In fact, Bellamy was wrapped up enough in this mantra that he did not realize at first that Miller’s expression from over the couch could be described as nothing less than “alarmed.” 

Bellamy stopped in his tracks. “Miller, what’s wrong?”

Suddenly another face joined Miller’s in examining Bellamy, this one looking even more skittish. 

“Jackson-- what are you doing…” Bellamy started, but paused as his roommate broke eye contact to grab a shirt that had been discarded behind the couch. 

The room fell back into silence. 

“You’re home!” Miller exclaimed finally, leaping off the couch and attempting to throw Jackson another discarded shirt discreetly. Bellamy still hadn’t moved from where he stood, his keys hovered over the bowl near the door. “Dude, you okay?” Miller continued. “No offense, but you kind of look like shit.”

Bellamy let the keys fall into the bowl with a resounding clank. He peered around his friend and back to the couch where Eric Jackson sat perfectly still, as if he could avoid notice if he just froze. Bellamy gestured to him. “Are we just going to ignore this?” 

Bellamy had forgotten how wide Miller’s eyes could get when faced with potential conflict. “No, no, of course not,” he replied nervously. 

“Hey Bellamy,” Jackson tried tentatively from the couch. His sitting still ploy had obviously failed.

Bellamy sucked his lips between his teeth and pushed his way past Miller-- not a totally easy task considering the width of both men’s shoulders and the narrowness of their entry hall. 

For so long, there had been two people in Bellamy’s life: Octavia and Miller. It was good then. They were a team; complementing each other and supporting each other even when they wanted to tear each others’ skin off. 

And then Bellamy broke their trio. And then O did. So it made sense that Miller had done the same.

But Bellamy had walked Miller through every step of his relationship with Clarke-- from reading her snarky emails out loud a few months back to texting him to quickly vacuum their place before she would come over. And from what it had sounded, O had walked Miller through her relationship with Lincoln.

Did that mean that O knew everything about what was going on in his living room right now? Was Bellamy the extraneous one in their team? He was being replaced.

Bellamy stalked into the kitchen and grabbed a beer out of the fridge-- one of Miller’s. He was feeling spiteful. He cracked it open and leaned on the counter looking out into the living room. Miller slowly walked into view.

Bellamy sighed. “How long has this been going on then?” he asked, his eyes wandering between the two men. 

Jackson’s mouth opened as if he were going to respond, but he quickly snapped it shut. Miller shifted his balance between his feet. “Really, not that long,” he jumped in. “Like, two weeks?” He looked back to the couch for confirmation. 

“Umm… three but yeah.” Jackson looked relieved to be able to contribute something to the room. 

Bellamy nodded slowly. He took a swig from the beer. “Cool.” He turned to his room, taking the beer with him. 

“Hey wait, man.” Miller took a step forward and grabbed his shoulder. Bellamy shrugged him off, but Miller continued, “Do you wanna, you know, talk about this? Is this cool?”

“I can leave!” Jackson exclaimed, jumping off of the couch. 

Bellamy allowed himself a leisurely blink. “No-- you’re fine. Just took me by surprise. I’m heading to bed anyhow.”

“You sure?” It killed Bellamy that Miller looked at him with genuine concern. 

Bellamy turned back to his door. “Really. Enjoy your night. I had a shitty day. Need to just sleep it off.” And without waiting for a response, he pushed into his room and closed the door behind him. 

Bellamy sunk to the floor leaning against the door and quickly downed the rest of the beer. He realized he had basically sentenced himself to a dinner of a lone beer, but he found he really wasn’t hungry anyway. 

Despite his reassurances, Bellamy could hear that Jackson did not stay for much longer. He heard Miller warmly whisper, “Goodnight, Jax,” followed by a moment of silence before their apartment door opened and closed. 

Bellamy was still sitting on the ground when Miller walked over to the entry that led to Bellamy’s and Octavia’s rooms. Bellamy wondered if he would knock, if he would lean into his room and see if Bellamy had really headed to bed like he said he was going to. He hoped not. Despite his original plan to spend the night ranting at Miller, his throat now felt tight. He didn’t want to talk. He’d done enough talking today. 

Eventually, Bellamy heard Miller’s footsteps retreat across the apartment to the other bedroom. Bellamy momentarily considered just sleeping there, propped up against his door, but his neck was already getting sore in this position. He was no longer young enough to be dramatic like that. 

He begrudgingly brushed his teeth and got into bed. It was early-- earlier than he had gone to bed in probably years-- and he figured he would spend hours staring into the darkness trying to figure out where this day had gone so disastrously wrong. 

Instead, Bellamy fell asleep fast.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was truly an accidental hiatus. However, since I last added to this story, here is what has happened in my life:  
> 1\. Moved to a new city (Nashville-- ironic because I started this story years ago having never lived in TN).  
> 2\. Had to say goodbye to all of the lovely friends I had made in my old city (Indianapolis).  
> 3\. Helped my parents move.  
> 4\. Adjusted our engagement party for the third time.  
> 5\. Dealt with inconvenient stuff with our Save the Dates (wedding planning really is a big job).  
> 6\. Spent a glorious few weeks in the middle of nowhere Wisconsin with my family and did not touch a computer.  
> 7\. Reread four of the books that I will be teaching for the first time this year.
> 
> Also, I spent a lot of June really digging into anti-racist work, and it didn't quite feel right to spend my time writing about these dumb kids when I could be doing bigger and more important work. I'm still spending a lot of time on that work, but I'm figuring out a balance. HOWEVER, in case you missed it, Black Lives Matter. 
> 
> And I know many people do more than that and still find time to write, but I'm not those people. Hoping I can get back on things now! I am also finally catching up on season seven!
> 
> Finally, thank you Taylor Swift for giving us a fantastic album to write to. folklore has been providing me with lots of inspiration.


	19. Drunk on This Pain

### Drunk on This Pain

Bellamy was pretty sure that from outward appearances, nothing in his life had changed. He still woke up each morning hoping for a sub gig, ate the same breakfast, coached his girls through jump shots AGAIN, went to bed around the same time that he had every day since he had returned to Arkadia. 

Bellamy even still made it to the faculty meeting that week, knowing that it would require him to be in the same room as her. 

He didn’t look at her though. He was proud of himself for that.

(Well, there might have been a moment when he walked in and could see the bright blonde of her hair at the usual table, but there was no eye contact, so it didn’t count).

(Right?)

He smiled sweetly and seethed silently through his meeting with Cage Wallace. The paperwork sat unsigned in the top drawer of his desk at home. There wasn’t much Bellamy could do, but if he were given until the end of the calendar year to return the documents, he sure as hell was going to take that full time. Supposedly, his pay cut wasn’t supposed to start until January, and he wasn’t going to give them an excuse to start it earlier.

Yet even though the days were technically nothing out of the ordinary, though they were the way he had moved through them for the past few years, they felt longer now, somehow. 

The following week he knew to keep his gaze fixated on his coffee as he walked into the Tuesday morning meeting. The only blond hair he saw was that of the swim coach who sat at his table. 

Bellamy was still thinking about Clarke far more than he wanted to by the end of that second week after he stormed out of his apartment, but the length of the days no longer felt quite so oppressive as they had in the first week. 

He made a pie that weekend-- a glorious bourbon apple pie all the way from scratch with a beautifully flakey lattice crust and only a few extra swigs from the bottle as he assembled it. As Bellamy rolled out the dough, he forced Miller to regale him with the tale of his blooming relationship with a science teacher. 

And yes, it did make Bellamy wonder what the science teacher he had spent the majority of his fall with was doing at that moment. It sort of made him want to call her up and hear how her Saturday run had gone, to see if she wanted to try some of this pastry masterpiece. 

But then he thought about how she would look at him-- how she would ask him what his plans were, if he was going to go back to school, and the desire dissipated. 

He had no plans. This was his life. It was just a matter of being content with it. 

That Tuesday when he walked into the faculty meeting, he did not avert his gaze. He was ready to meet her face head on. Bellamy was healing, he could do this.

But she sat facing away from him. He caught Jackson’s eye for a second, maybe, but there was no recognition of his presence. 

That night, Bellamy made a complicated chicken curry that required spices that had been pushed to the back of the cabinet and a stop at the Asian grocery to pick up ingredients he had never heard of. He spent the hours of creation giving Miller a detailed play-by-play of that evening’s uneventful basketball practice.

When Bellamy walked into their apartment the next night armed with the ingredients to make a paella, he was instead handed a phone by Miller. 

“Who is it?” he asked his roommate.

“Just take the phone you idiot, it’s me,” Octavia’s voice rang out from Miller’s hand. Bellamy looked at Miller who just shrugged and dropped the phone into his hand. 

Bellamy rolled his eyes before placing the phone to his ear. “Did someone neglect to tell me that my phone had been disconnected or something?”

“Might as well have been,” his sister responded. “I mean, we’ve talked recently, but then you’ll rush off to do something.”

“So Miller’s my secretary now?”

“We were on the phone anyway.”

Bellamy balanced the phone between his ear and shoulder and started unpacking the groceries. “So what do you want?”

“You to come to Vanderbilt this weekend.”

Bellamy hesitated. “I don’t know. I’m kind of busy. And I’ll see you soon for Thanksgiving, so don’t pull the ‘I miss you’ card.”

“Please tell me: What exactly are you busy with? Miller said you spent all last weekend baking, and I know you don’t have any Saturday games for basketball until January.”

“What’s wrong if I wanted to spend this weekend baking as well?”

“Oh, I mean, nothing if you’re a seventy-six year old widow rather than my not-yet-thirty year old brother whom I know throws himself into random tasks when he’s feeling worthless.”

Well, she had a point there. That was the problem with siblings: they knew your flaws even better than they could see your strengths at times. 

“And just because I’ll see you for Thanksgiving soon doesn’t mean you can’t see your only sibling now.”

And so that’s how Bellamy found himself entering a darkened dorm that Saturday and crashing on the futon he had adopted for Octavia that he had found abandoned outside some off-campus housing at the end of the previous year.

It was truly incredible what rich people were willing to pay to replace for the sake of convenience. 

Maybe it was a bit pathetic that he was in his thirties and still crashing in a dorm room rather than getting a hotel or something else like he imagined most of O’s classmates’ parents did when they visited. It was not something he was proud of, but it did make the most sense. Hotels around Vanderbilt were not cheap. 

Bellamy’s roommate at UT was a wide receiver by the name of Daniel. He was from Knoxville itself, and his dad would often offer to take them and a bunch of their teammates to a local steakhouse after big games. Bellamy would marvel at how the man would barely look at the check before signing off on the dinner of seven hungry football players. 

Not thinking was the greatest sign of privilege, in Bellamy’s opinion. 

All he could really offer to Octavia and her roommate were bagels on Saturday morning. Noted, it was from that fancy place by Belmont where a bagel sandwich could easily exceed $10, so it wasn’t an entirely negligible cost, and Bellamy was not disappointed in the slightest when Charmaine waved them off to head to Saturday morning ROTC training.

Plus, this meant that he and O could make it the ending point for a run through the hilly Nashville neighborhoods. 

Bellamy hadn’t run for almost a month at that point, and he was both impressed by how much he missed it and frustrated to watch himself fall behind as O bounded over hills that slowed his pace down significantly. 

As they walked back to O’s dorm under golden leaves, she finally broached the subject. 

“So, what happened?”

He was half surprised that she hadn’t sprung this on him the night before, forcing him to stay up late and go through every detail. 

“What did Miller tell you?”

“Only what he knows, which is NOTHING except that you’re baking a lot, you’re around the house more, and a certain blonde has not been seen for the past few weeks.”

“It’s really no big deal.”

“Sure it isn’t.” Octavia kicked an errant branch out of her path. “In fact, it’s such a small deal that you haven’t talked about it all even though you usually rant and rave and react whenever something in your life goes wrong.”

Bellamy pondered this fact. Had he really not talked about this with anyone? “I haven’t wanted to bring Miller down, ya know? It seems like things are going well for him with Jackson. I’m able to handle everything.”

“Yeah, okay. That’s definitely it. Which is also why you asked me to see if I could pick up a couple of extra shifts at the gym because ‘money might be tight’ and Miller had no idea what I was talking about when I asked him.”

“Fair. That does concern you.” And so he launched into an explanation of his meetings with Cage Wallace and the papers that taunted him from across the room every day when he got home. 

At that point, they had made it back to the dorm. Octavia sat on the floor and opened a bag of potato chips and started munching away. Bellamy laid on his back, certain that it was not the most sanitary place to be but not capable of caring at that point. When he finished explaining what he had worked through in order to make their finances work, Octavia smiled at him. “Hey: we’re going to be okay,” she said with a level of confidence Bellamy could not muster. “We’ve certainly been through worse. We’ll get through this too.”

Bellamy pushed his hair dried with sweat away from his face. “I’m sure we will. I just wish we didn’t have to.”

“However,” O continued contemplatively, “I still don’t understand two things: why you haven’t told Miller and how Clarke fits into all of this.”

Bellamy sat up and started gathering a towel to head down the hall for a shower. “Didn’t you have some things you wanted to do today? Shouldn’t we get out there?”

Octavia scootched herself in front of the door. “You’re not getting away with this that easily. Sit back down.” Octavia could be scary at times. Bellamy was impressed that he had ever been able to convince her to do anything. He plopped himself back on the carpet. 

“I’ll tell Miller soon. It doesn’t really change anything for him.”

“Except that he’s a friend who cares about you, but okay.” She looked at Bellamy. 

“Can I go shower now?”

“No! What else?”

Which is how Bellamy ended up explaining the inner workings of his heart to his still teenage sister. Under threat of not showering until he explained. 

As he retold what happened when he walked into Clarke’s apartment that night, he realized he could no longer recall some of the details. Everything had that fuzzy haze of rage blurring it. Had he spoken first or had she? How did he even learn that she was tangled up in all of this in the first place?

“So she was in the group that decided to cut your pay?” Octavia questioned. 

“Yes!” And then he thought back. She hadn’t actually been in that meeting, had she? “Well, kind of.”

“Kind of. Okay. Sure.” Octavia seemed doubtful.

“Can I shower now?” Bellamy needed to clear his head. 

His sister threw him a towel. “I hear the last stall is the cleanest.”

“Thanks,” he responded as he finally made his way out the door. 

“And Bellamy?” He turned back to her. “Sounds like we still have some things to figure out.”

He considered those words as he stood under a small trickle of lukewarm water. Bellamy had done most of his bathing at the gym when he was in college, and he was thankful for that every time that he visited O. But today, he had more to think about than how much mold was growing on the floor. 

He could probably forgive Clarke for being a part of those meetings. She hadn’t asked to be. She hadn’t told anyone to cut his salary. Fuck, thinking back on it, he was pretty sure that she didn’t even know it was an option. 

So that wasn’t what was bothering him. 

It was the way that she had seen all of this as an opportunity for him. _ Think of this as an opportunity. _ Like he could suddenly live this college dorm room life again and start over with a new career. Like he could just drop a dozen grand or so a year until he walked away with another piece of paper. That even if he got in on some fully funded program by some shred of luck that his basically non-existent savings account would somehow buoy him and O enough to actually have lives during that duration. 

That even if all of that happened in a way that didn’t totally financially ruin him, that there would be opportunities out there for someone with a Classics PhD to make a living rather than serve as someone’s unpaid intern until they died and their position opened. 

Bellamy’s dreams were safer as dreams. He had to keep his feet grounded. He had to keep his eyes on Octavia. That was where there was any chance of Blake success. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since I published a week ago, I think I have listened to folklore at least three times a day every day. So Taylor is my queen and ughhh this album so beautiful.
> 
> Also-- finally caught up on season seven! I am not sure what I am thinking of this season. TBH my favorite character is Raven and while her character arc has been interesting in this season, she has had such little screen time.


	20. Living for the Hope of It All

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's been a while since I've updated! Starting a new school in the midst of a pandemic has proved itself to be, well, challenging. 
> 
> Also, are you guys keeping up with season seven? Because, yeah, last week's episode pissed me off. 
> 
> I'm hoping to get this story wrapped up by chapter 25 with maybe one more sex scene in there somewhere.

### Chapter Twenty: Living for the Hope of It All

Clarke received too many spam calls to make picking up unidentified numbers a habit, but she generally accepted calls from Tennessee area codes. After all, she was still new to the area, and she never knew when it was a coworker or a neighbor.

That November afternoon, she wasn’t quite sure whom she would hear come through her car’s Bluetooth when she accepted the call. The voice sounded moderately familiar, but the grainier quality of the speakers prevented her from ever being able to immediately identify anyone.

“Hey-- is this Clarke?”

Clarke wracked her brain for where she had heard this voice before. Was it in the elevator to her apartment? Was it someone who always spoke up at faculty meetings, extending them past their supposed end time? That would be the type of person to make a call rather than just send an email… 

“Yeah, this is Clarke,” she responded. 

“Great-- I was pretty sure this was you, but I wanted to make sure that Miller wasn’t sabotaging me somehow.”

Finally able to recognize who had called her, Clarke suddenly felt a bit woozy, like she had stood up too quickly. 

She continued tentatively, feeling her fingers grip the wheel a bit more firmly. “Octavia?”

“Yeah, it’s me.” Clarke could hear the girl take a deep breath even through the shoddy sound quality of her car. “And this is weird that I’m calling you, so let’s just accept that and move on.”

Clarke let out a nervous giggle. This _was_ weird. What was going on?

“I’m assuming everything and everyone is okay? Otherwise, I feel like you would have told me what is going on by now. So what’s up?”

“No one’s dead, if that’s what you mean.” Clarke had somewhat forgotten that Bellamy’s little sister was almost distractingly blunt in her way of speaking. “But _okay_? That’s maybe another story.”

Clarke didn’t have a good response to that. Though the tone of the call had been light so far, there was a chance that Octavia was just as pissed at her as her brother was.

Her brother.

Who had not spoken to her in three weeks. Who had avoided catching her eye every time they were in the same room. 

Whose name Clarke’s fingers hovered over in her call log almost every night. 

But she never ponied up the courage to actually call-- or even send a text. She had opened up their messages multiple times and composed a variety of texts. Some were apologetic. Some were angry. She still couldn’t quite figure out why she felt either of those things when she wasn’t entirely sure what she had done or why she should even care so much about the feelings of a guy she had hooked up with for only a few weeks. 

During those moments of frenzied finger tapping, she wondered if he had his phone open to their message log as well. If he could see the three dots pulsate on his screen and then disappear as she deleted swaths of sentences. 

Clarke had considered asking Eric to push for updates from Miller about what was going on in their apartment, but Eric was still a new friend in an even newer relationship, so that felt like too big of an ask. 

The silence on the call couldn’t have been too long, but it was long enough for Clarke to pull up to her apartment. She brought herself out of her head and back down to earth. 

“Hey, Octavia? I’m about to pull into my garage and I’ll probably lose you. Give me a minute and I’ll call you back.”

“I mean, I wouldn’t blame you if you were just looking for an excuse to get off the phone and never called me back, but sure-- I’ll hear from you in a bit.” And the call ended from Octavia’s end.

Clarke pulled into her normal parking spot, closed her eyes, and let her head fall forward onto the steering wheel. She took a deep breath that didn’t as much clear her mind as it did remind her of the constant musty smell of her car. She grabbed her bag from the passenger seat and started heading up the stairs-- each step now punctuated by an image of Bellamy’s face. 

She dropped her bag on the floor at the entrance to her apartment and slumped on her couch. She let her phone sit next to her for a moment, the same feeling she had when she considered calling Bellamy washing over her as she prepared to call back his little sister. 

Octavia had a point: Clarke could just not call her back. What was stopping her? 

Just the sense of obligation and duty that pervaded basically every major decision she had ever made.

And the fact that she had spent too much of the past few weeks thinking about the way that Bellamy’s fingers would comb through her curls for this to be something she could just let fade away. 

She pulled her hair up into a ponytail, took a sip of water, and clicked on the group of numbers most recent in her call log. 

Octavia picked up after just one ring. “Hey, Clarke. Glad you decided to call back.”

“I think I am too.” 

“Okay, so here’s what’s up: My brother is an idiot.” 

Clarke let that sink in. “So, you’re _not_ taking his side?”

“I’m his little sister and was under his guardianship for many years, so that means I am more than aware of his weaknesses. There is no blind idolatry going on here.” Octavia paused for a moment. “And I know we have only met once and don’t really know each other, but I’ve had to mediate these kinds of disagreements between him and Miller before, and Miller has jumped in between me and him before, so I know it sometimes takes him a minute to see the other side of the story.”

“It’s been a bit more than a minute.”

“As previously stated: he’s an idiot.” Octavia audibly exhaled. “And so, this is now my invitation to hear your side of the story.”

“Well, what did he say to you?” Clarke took this as an opportunity to switch to speakerphone. She wasn’t going to do this whole conversation balancing the phone against her ear. 

“Ah-- not how this works.” Octavia’s voice took on the tone of gentle, teasing chastisement, and Clarke felt herself feel more at ease. “I’m listening to your side. I genuinely believe my brother is an idiot, but as his sister, I do have to give him the benefit of the doubt as well, and that means not putting you on the defense against anything he said. I need to hear it as you interpreted it.”

Clarke had replayed all of these moments so many times in her head and restated them and analyzed them with Raven at least twice. 

She had done this before. She could do it again. So she started at the beginning: The unexpected meeting in Cage Wallace’s office. 

And then she realized, no, wait, that wasn’t quite the beginning. She rewound herself all the way back to her own high school experiences, to sheltering in the art room during lunch during the weeks leading up to and after the anniversary of her dad’s death every year. Back to watching her art teacher painstakingly combine the remnants of almost empty paint bottles to avoid wasting a drop. 

These were moments that hadn’t made it into her previous recountings. They flowed out from somewhere deep inside Clarke like a stream of water that had flowed under the surface for years. Some groundwater that disrupted the stability of the soil’s upper crust. 

Clarke hadn’t realized she had been holding on to all of that, those feelings of safety in the art room, a deep desire to protect and save that space, even though she had chosen to work in a very different discipline. 

Octavia was silent through this entire retelling, and Clarke quickly interrupted her dip into nostalgia. “Sorry-- none of that is relevant.”

If it was possible to hear someone’s smile through their voice, Clarke was pretty sure she could hear it in Octavia’s response. “If you went there, it probably is.”

Clarke brought herself back to the present, remembering suddenly Cage Wallace’s remarks about the football program’s funding after her meeting about Atom at the beginning of the year and found herself tying that story into this one as well.

Huh. She had wiped that from her memory. Little inklings and hints that should have made her aware of the chance of a future flood. 

And now she was at that Friday night. That night that she had expected to be uneventful but took a turn for the worse. 

She recounted the conversation to Octavia as best as she could. Bellamy’s anger at the system, her desire to find the good in this moment. How they had talked about him going back to school just earlier that week. How good she thought he would be if he would go back to school. How much happier he would be. 

“And then he told me that I knew nothing and walked out the door. And I haven’t heard from him since.”

Octavia hummed on the other end of the line. Clarke anxiously awaited her reaction, not entirely sure why she was putting so much stock into the opinion of a girl she had met once. 

“Well,” Octavia finally started, “you’re not wrong.”

Clarke felt her shoulders relax away from her shoulders. 

“He would be happier.” 

The conversation stalled. Clarke finally couldn’t take it anymore and butted in. “So then, what’s the problem?”

“The problem is that the last time Bellamy did anything for himself, the last time he enjoyed his life and got out of Arkadia, our mom died.” 

There was no good response to that. 

“And,” Octavia continued, “he doesn’t want me to share any bit of any burden he shoulders a single bit.” Clarke was about to jump in and say something, but Octavia continued. “And, if I had to guess, despite the fact that you’ve clearly been through a lot, Clarke, returning to school for you would be a personal financial decision rather than a huge financial risk.

“I mean, I’ve been lucky-- it turns out that college admissions offices are pretty sympathetic to the orphaned daughters of single mothers who maintain a strong GPA-- but going to school has all these unseen costs, you know? Like we thought I was all settled for my freshman year, but then we showed up at my dorm and realized that we had completely forgotten hangers. And, like, hangers aren’t like bank-breakingly expensive, but they aren’t a totally negligible cost either, you know?

“And I know Bellamy constantly freaked all of last year that I was somehow missing out on the full experience of a student because I spent my weeknights working at the library and Sunday mornings working the desk at the gym. And I was honestly okay and I wouldn’t trade anything for this experience, but it’s a lot. And Bellamy’s been great. But every time he comes here and sees these bedazzled dorm rooms and girls toting their brand new laptops in designer bags, I know he feels like he’s let me down.

“So, I imagine that was not quite your experience. And we’re doing fine. We’re no charity case. But it’s not easy. 

“Opportunities don’t always feel like opportunities when they’re tied up in obligations.” 

Clarke felt her face heating despite herself. She had known these things, but she hadn’t really internalized them in the way that the Blakes had. She felt the need to apologize, but Octavia was still on a roll.

“And, like, look: none of this is still on you. He overreacted. You were doing your best, and he’s stubborn and insecure and hot-headed.”

Clarke finally got a word in: “Probably should have been something I thought about.”

“Eh. Can’t really expect that of anyone you’ve been dating for like two months and you’re in their apartment ranting and raving.”

Clarke nodded assent and then realized that Octavia couldn’t see her. “That does seem fair.”

“But do you know what the good news is?”

Clarke waited for the answer, but it didn’t come. “No…?”

“This means this thing doesn’t have to be over.”

Clarke thought through the conclusion that Octavia had just drawn. It didn’t have to be over? At this point, they hadn’t been talking for almost as long as they had even been a thing. And they had barely been on speaking terms before that. And the issue didn’t feel as much that Clarke didn’t understand this element of Bellamy’s life and more that she hadn’t known how to respond when he was so angry. And then she hadn’t known how to improve things when they had all fallen apart and instead had retreated into herself and avoided the entire thing. 

“Are you sure about that?”

Octavia paused on the other end. Clarke wasn’t sure whether she should interpret it as discomfort or a natural moment of contemplation. Finally, her response rang through: “Do you want it to be over?”

It was weird, Clarke reflected, to be invited into this conversation regarding the intimate murmurings of her heart by a girl she barely knew and by all means should be turned against her. Shouldn’t she be having this conversation with Raven? Or, heavens forbid, her mother? 

But the point was: She wasn’t. She wasn’t having this conversation with anyone. She was mostly avoiding this conversation, and Raven, for all her strengths and ability to get Clarke to confront truths about herself, had not asked Clarke this one simple question: Did she want it to be over.

Did she?

Clarke breathed out her reply like any other exhale. “No.”

“Great! Because I think that’s the right answer.”

Clarke suddenly realized what she had exposed about herself, and to whom. “I mean, you’re not going to run and tell him that, are you? You don’t have him on the other end of this line, do you?” Her questions were frantic. 

“Don’t worry; your secret’s safe with me. Besides, if you haven’t already picked up on this, Bellamy has a tendency to ignore the people who he should most listen to.

“And here’s the thing: I know Bellamy, and probably better than you do, but I also know a different Bellamy than you do. 

“Basically, I can’t fix this for you. But I can give you some advice and then hope for the best.”

Clarke was now leaning in towards where she had rested her phone on the coffee table. “What advice is that?”

“Let him be the savior in this story. And I say that with absolutely nothing against you-- I’m sure if someone else were given control of every decision Bellamy ever had to make, his life would be perfect. But he needs to make his own decisions, to seize his own opportunities all on his own.”

Clarke let that sink in. What options did that give her? What actions could she take? 

“You’ve given me a lot to think about, Octavia.”

“I’m pretty good at raising all sorts of problems and then leaving others to solve them,” the girl responded assuredly. A door creaked open, and Clarke overheard Octavia’s muffled greeting of someone who had walked in. “Hey, Clarke? I have to go. But you have my number now, right?”

“Right.” Clarke was still thinking through the task that had been laid ahead of her. 

“Well, thanks for answering my call, Clarke. Hopefully, I’ll see you again at some point.” And the call ended with a click. 

For the second time that evening, Clarke found herself sitting stock still and stuck in her thoughts. She eventually pulled herself up, grabbed some Cheez-Its, and opened up her laptop. And she needed a little help, so she opened up her phone to talk to one other person that evening.

“Hey, Raven. Could you help me with something?”

“Is it illegal, dangerous, or scandalous?”

“I’m not sure yet, but maybe.”

“Then count me in.”


	21. My Stolen Lullabies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alrighty friends, I promise I'm still thinking about this story and it WILL be finished. (Hopefully before November since I want to do NaNoWriMo this year). 
> 
> BUT ALSO UGH what a TERRIBLE ending to this show! I feel like I rage-watched the final three episodes. The only positive things in it were 1. Raven and 2. Emori because they are the BEST and so now I really wanted to get inside of Raven's head SO I DID because this is my story. (Even if it's just for a second). 
> 
> And also, when I get a minute and feel inspired, I kind of want to explore Memori in this universe, so WE WILL SEE WHAT HAPPENS GUYS.

### My Stolen Lullabies

Spending time on Vanderbilt’s campus with Octavia always had a sort of weird effect on Bellamy-- a vibe that settled over him like a mist that wouldn’t clear for a week or so after his return. 

The most obvious and physical symptom of a weekend with her was that he almost always went home with a sore back from sleeping on a futon or air mattress for a few nights. And from being practically tackled by her whenever he first arrived on campus.

Consider it just another sign that he was officially old. 

And it was always nice to spend time with his little sister and to know that she wasn’t out making absolutely horrific decisions. Not that he thought that was how she spent her time otherwise. He just didn’t trust people. So then he would spend the next few days wondering if that was how she really behaved or if she put on some front for him when he visited.

And that would nibble at the back of his mind, reminding him that he was somehow supposed to be responsible for this whole other living thing when he barely felt like he could function himself. 

But beyond all of the somewhat misplaced paternal feelings he had for his sister, there was something about college campuses that got to him in general. It was weird to see all of these young people gathered in one place-- still so optimistic and hopeful about the world. All crammed into a couple square miles for this supposed joint goal of becoming educated people. 

And yet, it seemed that half of what they did was exacerbate each others' stupidity. 

He watched that weekend as a kid down O’s hall tried to literally throw a cup of beer to a friend.

A cup. Not a bottle, not a can: a  _ cup. A solo cup _ . And not as a joke but as a genuine way to pass a beer.

It went about as well as one could expect.

And then O mentioned in passing that both of those guys were physics majors. 

So maybe it was actually nice that his little sister was dating an older man. To be honest, he should probably take a good portion of that blame. Once their mother had died, O had spent a whole lot of time hanging around people a decade older than her, and Bellamy hadn’t exactly encouraged her to join the party scene of people her age. 

And truly, Bellamy gave Lincoln a passing grade. Anyone who was willing to show up on a Sunday to watch his sister roll around in the mud and chug beer with her rugby team had to be a somewhat decent guy.

It didn’t hurt that Lincoln had brought him a coffee with just a touch of whiskey to help ward off the suddenly brisk air that hovered over the field that Sunday morning before he left. 

Watching his little sister bound off the field to plant muddy kisses on her boyfriend’s cheeks was a surprisingly rewarding experience.

He’d done okay, he figured, with this entire ‘raising your little sister’ thing. This was what he had been put on this earth to do. 

No matter how badly he felt he failed at it every day.

And though Octavia hadn’t pushed him to talk more about Clarke (or even their impending financial problems) for the rest of the weekend, he felt them rattling through his skull. 

And that rattle just continued on the drive home. It was a different kind of rattle than the typical mist that clouded his thinking after returning from Vanderbilt visits in the past. 

It had settled into an omnipresent buzz as he rolled into Monday. Like a hangover he couldn’t quite shake. 

But other than that, all was normal that week. 

Until he showed up for Friday’s practice to find that his usual apathetic assistant coach was not in her usual perch. 

And instead, Raven Reyes was standing at the side of the court watching as his team ran suicides. 

“You’re late,” she said, barely looking at him as he walked out with the bag of balls. “I figured we’d make some use of this time. Hope that’s cool.”

Bellamy was surprised, but he tried to reflect the science teacher’s disaffected mood back at her. “Yeah, of course. Where’s Nikki?”

“Ah, she was just whining about having to coach this afternoon, so I said I’d be more than happy to take this afternoon for twenty bucks.” The brunette shot him a winning smile but then directed her eyes back to the court. “Keep it up, ladies!” 

For a moment, the only sound was of the teenagers panting and their sneakers squeaking across the shiny floor. And then, without moving her eyes toward him, Raven spoke again, “Plus, you and I need to talk.”

“Do we now?” Bellamy wasn’t entirely sure what to make of this. He had already had a long week. He couldn’t imagine what Raven had to talk with him about-- from what he knew, none of his players were on academic probation (something that seemed to be less common with the girls teams as the boys, as it turned out). So that only left discussing Clarke, and he wasn’t sure if he could handle a conversation exhausting his romantic history when it had been less than a week since the last one. 

“Well, I’m not sure how much of it is talk, but I need to give you something. Just hold on a sec.”

She turned toward the bleachers and started rifling through her backpack. One of his freshmen took this as an opportunity to swerve over to him. “Coach. Coach,” she took two deep pants, “How much longer do we need to run?” Her eyes pleaded with him.

Bellamy looked at his watch and realized that if Raven had started them on time (and he had no doubt that she had-- commanding drill sergeant that she was), then the girls had been running for a solid twenty minutes. Far more than he usually asked of them. 

“Um, you’re good,” he responded, and then shouted through the whole gym, “Ladies! Let’s transition into our dribble sequence.” He tossed balls out into the gym as he quickly scanned for attendance.

By the time the girls got started, Raven was standing next to him again, still looking at the court rather than him. She brandished a large stack of papers his way. “I think you might want this.”

Bellamy took the stack and examined the top sheet. He recognized the name and some of what was written, but he wasn’t entirely sure what he was reading. He flipped forward a few pages and saw his name mentioned a few times and a couple of places that were highlighted. He wanted to read more closely, but the dispatterned beat of bouncing balls distracted him, plus, Raven was talking again.

“I felt weird printing these off on a school printer, but who even owns their own printer anymore, you know? Like, what, do you expect that I have my very own home office set up in my 400 square foot apartment? Who do you think I am? Plus, I learned how to hack the firewall a long time ago and now whenever I go on any website that I don’t want the school to see, it just registers as Facebook on their end, and they can’t blame me for that, can they? And even if it were to get that far, Miles over in IT seems to think I’m pretty okay, so…”

Bellamy finally had to cut her off. “Raven. What am I looking at?”

“Oh. Right.” She smirked and shook her head to herself. “You have no idea what I am talking about.”

Bellamy stared at her blankly, waiting for further elucidation.

“Well, if you’re someone like me, someone who sees a brick wall and thinks less about what it’s protecting you from and more about what it is keeping from you, you make it your business to leap over them as often as possible.

So I’ve spent some time in the school’s backsystem. Just, you know, snooping around, checking that everything’s in order. It has been really entertaining ever since I learned how to access everyone’s email records.”

Bellamy suddenly wondered what incriminating things he had put in his emails. But god, for someone whom Bellamy generally thought as quiet, Raven certainly could get fired up at times. Her explanation was coming rapid-fire, and Bellamy felt like he was six steps behind.

“Don’t worry: I spend most of my time just searching my name, making sure that none of my coworkers are shit-talking me and none of my students are passing along answers, that kind of thing… 

“But more recently, I started seeing your name pop up a few more times than usual. So I did some reading. And then I moved over into HR…”

Bellamy was starting to make sense of the conversation. “Raven: This is definitely illegal.”

“What? Are you going to report me? I’m not out there to steal anyone’s identity. I’m just naturally nosey. Call it a permanent side-effect of learning your boyfriend has another girlfriend. But yeah. I found some stuff. And I compiled it. And now I’m here, giving it to you.”

She stood there, as if he were now suddenly supposed to acquire all of the information in these documents immediately through some act of osmosis and have an immediate response. 

“Um, thanks?” 

“No problem.” Raven’s mouth turned up in a self-satisfied grin. She directed her attention back to the court. “Whoa there, Charlotte! You call that dribbling? That’s pathetic!” She sauntered across the court and grabbed a ball out of a shocked freshman’s hands. Even through his confusion about everything that had just transpired, he couldn’t help but realize that Raven would make a far more suitable assistant coach. She eventually called his team over and demonstrated some strategies that Bellamy had not thought someone with a limp had enough dexterity to execute. She swang by the edge of the court as the girls started practicing it. “Go read that. I’ve got this.” 

Bellamy didn’t think he had much of a choice but to listen. He took the stack of papers and took a seat in the bleachers and started reading them, word for word, page for page.

And it took every ounce of his self-restraint to not tear up each and every one as he read it.

***

Raven honestly hadn’t expected to find anything when Clarke had put her on the job. In fact, she wasn’t even sure that Clarke knew exactly what she was asking of her. It wasn’t like she frequently shared that she spent her time hacking into the school’s internet server and reading its secrets.

And it was probably best that it stayed that way.

For as much juicy gossip as Raven could expose through this hobby, she knew that this was more power than she probably should possess.

So she genuinely did use her powers for good rather than evil. She just kept track of the omnipresent cheating rings and tried to keep them in check. 

(And by in check, she meant within the science department. She honestly couldn’t care less if the history teachers were dumb enough to use the exact same tests every year. That was their problem, not hers). 

Raven also might have used this once or twice when creating lab partners. Nothing was more entertaining than watching a boy try to do a chem experiment while sitting next to his crush.

(Hadn’t these kids realized that if they connected their phones to the wifi, all of their private messages were being broadcast using the school’s technology? For supposedly being the most tech-savvy generation, they sure were stupid at times). 

Raven was reflecting on her own brilliance when Bellamy returned to her side. At this point, she had directed the girls to clean up the gym and head out, and for her first time on this gig, she thought she made a pretty decent basketball coach. 

Bellamy’s voice registered at an even lower octave than normal. “Does this mean what I think it does?”

“That depends, what do you think it means?” She leveled her gaze at him, and though he stood perfectly still, she could feel something moving, uncoiling inside of him. 

“That I’m an idiot, and I’ve been played.”

Well, that wasn’t quite the response that she had expected, and she told him so. “So let’s try that again,” she continued, as if he were one of her stubborn students, “What do you think it means?”

He sighed and smiled slightly at her. “I could probably fuck them up.”

“You could probably fuck them up,” Raven repeated, grinning, despite herself. 

Bellamy sank into a squat, elbows balanced on his knees, chin sinking into his hands, the papers slipping onto the gym floor. “Fuckkkkk.” Raven couldn’t quite tell if this utterance was one of relief or of frustration. “Fuck,” he said once more and with more conviction. The few girls still making their way out of the gym looked over inquisitively, and Raven shooed them away. 

As their footsteps faded, Bellamy was still in that same squat position and didn’t appear to be moving. Finally, Raven lowered herself down toward him, adjusting her bad knee to hopefully mitigate any effects of the position. “So, what now?” she whispered.

“What now.” He said it like a statement rather than a question. “What now indeed. I was going to ask you that. Your intel, after all.”

“Your life, after all,” she retorted. He stood up, and Raven felt her knee creak with relief as she joined him. “But you need anything, you have me.” 

Raven hadn’t expected to say that. She thought she would give him the stack of papers, and mission accomplished, all good, hope for the best but prepare for the worst. She liked Bellamy, sure, but she really had never had any reason to think much of him beyond his role as the football coach. And then, later, the man whom her friend took to bed occasionally. And was decently fun to play board games with.

But as Bellamy combed his fingers through his dark curls, Raven had a sudden flash of what Clarke really saw in this man. This person standing with her was so much more than the apathetic and sometimes abrasive front he projected. There was so much more going on somewhere in there. 

He looked down at her, his face still partly concealed by his hand. “Raven. Be honest with me. Was this just something you stumbled across, or did someone put you up to this?”

Ah, and there was another flash of that insightfulness that had been invisible to her until she was forced to see him through someone else’s eyes. She put a hand up on his shoulder. “I had some hints that there was maybe something suspicious going on. But, come on, you know I answer to no one but myself.” This was only one standard deviation from the truth.

His eyes narrowed at that, but his lips betrayed the hint of a smile. “I have some things to consider, don’t I.” It was, again, not a question. 

Raven took this as a cue that her job was done. She removed her hand from his shoulder, swung on her backpack, and made her way out of the gym, not even bothering to respond with anything other than a smirk. 

She was pretty sure that he stood a little taller than he had when she first saw him that afternoon. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I like, know where I want things to go, but I have been struggling to get there. So this might be a bit of Ravenus ex machina. Also, as a heads up, I know nothing about hacking and have no idea if any of this is possible. But if anyone could figure it out, it would be Raven, right?


	22. We Gather Stones Never Knowing What They’ll Mean

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A quick enough turn around on a chapter? When was the last time that happened... April?
> 
> But really, this chapter is pretty short and kind of came to me in a flash, so hopefully it makes sense as I figure a way out of the plot that I have dug myself into. 
> 
> [Raven continues to be my favorite].
> 
> Alternative title for this chapter: Plausible Deniability

### We Gather Stones Never Knowing What They’ll Mean

Clarke had thought that asking her friend for help with this project she had undertaken would have led to them spending more time together, but instead, Raven had become a recluse. Every evening, Clarke would wonder if she had somehow ruined her friendship by pushing Raven outside of her comfort zone, but then she would get a quick text from the girl to clarify a detail about Bellamy that Clarke never would have thought would be relevant. 

Clarke always ended her answers asking if there was anything she could do to help. Raven’s response was always two words: Plausible deniability. 

So Clarke was a little surprised when she had a knock on her door Friday evening-- she was expecting to have a quiet night in. Instead, she found Raven standing in her doorway, a bottle of wine in one hand and another tucked under her arm. She walked into the kitchen and started rifling around for the bottle opener without much of a welcome. 

“Hey…” Clarke greeted her. She watched as her guest pulled the cork out of the bottle of pinot and took a swig straight out of the bottle. “Rough day?”

Raven narrowed her eyes at her friend and let her mouth curl up into her signature smirk. “It’s in his hands now.”

Clarke could feel her forehead furrow in the way that it always did when she couldn’t quite connect the dots. She started to put it together. “His… hands?” Raven took another gulp from the bottle and raised her eyebrows as an affirmative response. Clarke stepped into the kitchen and grabbed down some glasses-- hoping that the movement would help her process whatever it was that wasn’t quite working out in her head. “Are you referring to Bellamy?”

Raven rolled her eyes, and Clarke wasn’t sure if it was because the answer was obvious or at the glass being offered to her-- or a combination of both. “Well, I’m certainly not talking about Eric.”

“Raven: What have you done?”

Raven shhhed her. “As I’ve been saying, plausible deniability.”

“I think that only goes so far if I am also the first person you would call if you were to be arrested.” 

The brunette shrugged and leaned onto the counter. “Too bad you won’t ditch that freckled idiot and become my common-law spouse like we had sworn to do. Pretty sure that then we could be protected by spousal privilege.” 

“We haven’t quite hit that point yet, but that option is still on the table.” Clarke poured herself a glass of wine at this point. “Now, stop being coy. You’re over here acting all mysterious, but I know you didn’t come over here with not one, but two, bottles of wine to just talk about the weather.”

Raven walked over to the couch, toting the bottle in one hand, and unable to restrain her self-satisfied grin. “You said you wanted to leave any decisions in his hands, right?”

Clarke tightened her lips into a firm line. “Yes. This is all him.”

“And you promise that you are going to stick with that, even if I tell you?”

It’s both fantastic and frustrating when someone knows you well enough to know your flaws, anticipate your actions, and make you acknowledge the negative course your life could take before you even get the chance to make that decision on your own. Clarke sighed. “I promise.”

“Even if you think you know how to best fix someone else’s life?”

“Even if I always know how to make everyone else’s life perfect and they never listen to me.”

Raven stared at her friend, one eyebrow raised.

“Fine,” Clarke conceded. “I won’t intervene.” 

“I got a hold of Bellamy’s contract.”

“How did…”

“And I also managed to get a hold of the hiring contract of every football coach at Arkadia for the past thirty years.”

Clarke realized that Raven was purposefully omitting exactly how she got her hands on this information.

“And then, I got to looking at, really, everyone’s hiring contracts.” She paused for emphasis. “You negotiated! Good girl. They criminally underpay first-year teachers here. I know. Too bad we have such a strict pay scale. Well, or so they told you. In fact, it was really the graph of the pay scale that they sent you during negotiations that really got me looking at things closely.”

Clarke finally had the chance to intervene when Raven paused for a long sip of wine. “Raven, what are you getting to?”

“Has Bellamy talked about his family at all?”

Clarke said yes before she even realized without thinking, but then she needed to add, “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Did you know Bellamy identifies as Filipino?”

Clarke resigned herself to the fact that she wasn’t going to get any answers until Raven had Sherlock Holmesed the reveal to her. “I mean, yeah. What about it?”

“Would you guess that Bellamy is one of two people employed by Arkadia in the past thirty years who identifies as Southeast Asian?”

“I mean, I’d never really thought about it, but it makes sense…”

Raven’s spiel continued, “And would you guess that Arkadia’s faculty has averaged less than 10% people of color, dipping as low as only 3% in the early 2000s?”

“Again, I’m unfortunately not surprised, but…”

“And did you know that typically the starting salary offered to those members is 10% less than a similarly qualified white employee?”

Without meaning to, Clarke shook her head in confusion and revelation. “Excuse me, what?”

“Yep. At least. Except,” Raven drained her glass, and Clarke was simultaneously impressed and annoyed by her friend’s sudden penchant for drama. “Except for your good friend Bellamy. His deal is even worse than average. After working at the Ark for four years, Bellamy is still earning 75% of his predecessor’s starting salary. And that guy started working here in the _80s_.” 

Clarke suddenly understood the necessity of the wine. “This,” she stumbled over her words, “This is a lot.” She reflected for a moment. “What about…” Clarke gestured at the criminal she had invited into her life.

“Me?” Raven scoffed. “I mean, looking back at it, they must have tried, you know, with a ‘Reyes’ on their hands and all. Unfortunately for them, I’m assertive and kind of a bitch, so I was pretty insistent on what I needed in order to work there. I was emailed that same PDF explaining the pay scale as you were.”

“This was _not at all_ what I thought I was asking of you.”

“Plausible deniability, girlfriend. Though I don’t know what you really thought you were going to get out of asking me for help.”

“I don’t know, I honestly didn’t expect it to go anywhere; I certainly didn’t realize that I was contracting my very own Julian Assange.”

“I think I’m going to take that as a compliment.”

The two sat and sipped on their wine quietly for a moment. 

Clarke broke the silence. “So…”

“Nope.” Raven jumped in before she could even finish her sentence.

“What?”

“You’re going to want to start some initiative and fix all of this and make it better, or if that doesn’t work, just burn it down to the ground.”

Clarke laid back, defeated, found out. “Well, yeah.”

“Not your information. This doesn’t affect you.”

“I mean, it does. It’s my school,” Clarke asserted. “Any inequity affects my working environment.” She felt very sure in this statement. By bringing this to light, they could make the world a better place! And her students would benefit! Everyone needed this.

Raven interrupted her idealistic thought process. “What you really mean by that is that anything that affects Bellamy affects you.”

Now it was Clarke’s turn to roll her eyes. “I mean, that too, but I am being serious here! This is now bigger than Bellamy.”

“And unfortunately, not your job to do everything about. Trust me. I have provided Bellamy with documentation of all of this, but there are also some employees that will be receiving some very interesting information in their personal emails tomorrow morning. Including Eric. So I guess I was lying earlier. It is also in Eric’s hands.” Raven took a deep breath and leveled her gaze with her friend. “You’re not supposed to know this shit. We’ve got to let those affected deal with this on their own terms. And once they’ve decided what those terms are, that’s when we jump in and support rather than lead.” Clarke was constantly astonished by how Raven could unleash havoc and maintain just a steady mood. Clarke burned like an open flame, but Raven’s hidden heat was admirable and potentially more destructive. 

A beat of silence. A sip of wine. Clarke realized that letting someone else lead was not in her nature. She wondered if she should have, in fact, never let Raven tell her any of this. All this information was going to have her fingers twitching until it was resolved. 

Another sip. A deep breath. She could do this. She could sit back. Right? Well, she could sit back as long as _something_ was happening to fix it. “Do you… Do you think he’ll do anything? Do you think _they’ll_ do anything?”

“Well, I don't think either of us can expect every single employee affected by this to have the same response. But you know at least one of them decently well. That is, as long as that time spent together wasn’t just focused on sucking each others’ faces off,” Raven replied. “And yeah. Yeah, I do. From what I understand, he’s got too much on the line here to not. And according to his high school record, he’s not always about playing it safe.”

Clarke made a mental note to ask him about that-- if they ever spoke again.

“So. What do we do now?”

“Now?” Raven poured another glass for each of them. “Now, we wait.”

Waiting was not one of Clarke’s strengths.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because, yes! Racism is systemic and everywhere! 
> 
> And maybe it's weird that I struggled with writing this piece back in June as this country grappled with renewed awareness of that racism because it felt wrong to be writing something that felt so unimportant in the midst of this large national conversation (which is not new! It's been around! And also! It's not over!). And now, as it turns out, it's something I want to deal with in my story? 
> 
> So yeah. If you're not ready to talk about racism, then this isn't the place for you.
> 
> If you have constructive criticism about how it's handled here, I am all ears and ready to learn.
> 
> [Also, is Sherlock Holmes a verb now? Because I definitely used it as one.]


End file.
